Poster detail of Comicos de la Legua, showing a few of his expressive mouths
As part of a larger project to get fresh tacos into the hands and mouths of hungry Starbucks partners at Seattles Sodo building headquarters, I was asked to mount a collection of 28 vintage Mexican movie posters from the 50s and 60s. Many of these were brought together a few years ago in a book published by Chronicle Books, ‘Cine Mexicano’.
Including a more recent 'Zona Roja', which has a bit of San Francisco style lettering
Printed for the most part on newsprint, folded up and sitting in storage for many years, these were very fragile and exhibited damage, especially where the horizontal and vertical folds intersected. Handling them required a lot of care and dry mounting them was challenging. A few small ones were smaller, contemporary reproductions (digital prints). The installation was not meant to be archival but solely to create the primary wall decor of the restaurant. In this case, I was following a careful layout created by Mesher Shing McNutt who sourced the posters and speced the very long galvanized metal panels to which they were glued. I mixed small batches of wheat paste and applied it directly to the metal, since brushing it to the posters would have caused them to fall apart. The gently dampened poster was then lowered onto the wet glue starting one half at a time. I used old bristle brushes that I sometimes use when I stretch rice paper paintings. Water on a sponge is then used to clean up any excess glue along the edges. I would let each layer get bone dry before attempting to place the next overlapping poster.
These were delightful to be around. Masterful examples of period graphic art including many gouache paintings by Ernesto Cabral in films featuring the clownish actor known mostly as ‘Resortes’.
Another detail from a second set of panels
Showing the left end of one of the two pairs of metal poster panels
