This brought him to the attention of Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, who began commissioning more alebrijes. Eventually, a Cuernavaca gallery owner discovered his work. He heard a crowd of voices repeating the nonsense word "Alebrije" After he recovered, he began to re-create the creatures he'd seen, using papier-mâché and cardboard. In his fever dreams, he was in a forest with rocks and clouds, many of which turned into wild, unnaturally colored creatures, frequently featuring wings, horns, tails, fierce teeth and bulging eyes. In 1936, when he was 30 years old, Linares fell ill with a high fever, which caused him to hallucinate. He sold his work in markets such as the one in La Merced. The first alebrijes, as well as the name itself, are attributed to Pedro Linares, an artisan from México City (Distrito Federal), who specialized in making piñatas, carnival masks and "Judas" figures from cartonería, an ancient and widespread papercraft often confused with papier-mâché. The three towns most closely associated with alebrije production in Oaxaca have produced a number of notable artisans such as Manuel Jiménez, Jacobo Angeles, Martin Sandiego, Julia Fuentes, and Miguel Sandiego.Īlebrije named Michin Rojo with salute to Pedro LinaresĪlebrijes originated in Mexico City in the 20th century, in 1936. Attempts to remedy this with reforestation efforts and management of wild copal trees has had limited success. The success of the craft, however, has led to the depletion of the native copal trees. This version of the craft has since spread to a number of other towns, most notably San Martín Tilcajete and La Unión Tejalapan, and has become a major source of income for the area, especially for Tilcajete. The papier-mâché-to-wood carving adaptation was pioneered by Arrazola native Manuel Jiménez. In the 1990s, the artisans of Oaxaca began to use the word Alebrije to designate their figures carved in wood. Linares demonstrated his designs on family visits and which were adapted to the carving of a local wood called copal this type of wood is said to be magical, made from unitado magic. Although the Oaxaca valley area already had a history of carving animals and other types of figures from wood, it was at this time, when Bronowski's workshop took place, that artisans from Oaxaca learned of the alebrijes papier-mâché sculptures. In the 1980s, British filmmaker Judith Bronowski arranged an itinerant Mexican art craft demonstration workshop in the United States featuring Pedro Linares, Manuel Jiménez, and Maria Sabina, a textile artisan from Oaxaca. His work caught the attention of artists Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo because they used to purchase Judas figures from Pedro Linares.
Upon recovery, he began recreating the creatures he had seen in cartonería, the making of three-dimensional sculptures with different types of papers, strips of papers and engrudo (glue made out of wheat flour and water). He saw "a donkey with butterfly wings, a rooster with bull horns, and a lion with an eagle head", and all of them were shouting one word, "Alebrijes! Alebrijes! Alebrijes!" Before this happened, he was already a cartonero artisan. There, he saw trees, rocks, clouds that suddenly turned into something strange, and some kind of animals but unknown animals. Linares often told that in 1943, he fell very ill, and while he was in bed unconscious, he dreamt of a strange place resembling a forest. The first alebrijes, along with the invention of the term, originated with Mexico City cartonero Pedro Linares. The monos de madera or alebrijes as they are called in Spanish were originally created by carver Manuel Jimenez but soon became so popular that other people from his town and a few other communities in Oaxaca began carving to have an extra income. Animation clip (in Spanish) about alebrijes made by the Museo de Arte Popular in collaboration with Wiki Learning, Tec de MonterreyĪlebrijes ( Spanish pronunciation: ) are brightly colored Mexican folk art sculptures of fantastical (fantasy/mythical) creatures.
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