Lourdes Grobet

Lourdes Grobet Argüelles (25 July 1940 – 15 July 2022) was a Mexican contemporary photographer, known for her photographs of Mexican lucha libre wrestlers.

Grobet spent some time as a painter before focussing on photography.

Her photography led her to explore lucha libre, and she spent a lot of time getting to know the luchadores (wrestlers).

Grobet did some theatre and video, and published several books.

Grobet's work has been the subject of numerous exhibitions, and she received many grants and awards for her work.

Grobet was born in México City, where she grew up with her parents.

Grobet took a formal painting class at the Academy of San Carlos.

Her parents did not like the views of the school and sent her to work under a Catholic professor named José Suárez Olvera, who painted murals for the Church of San Francisco.

She did not care for his work much because she felt it lacked originality.

Grobet asked herself what art is: “Looking around, and after asking myself the inevitable questions about what art is, it became clear that for me it was a language, a way of saying things, and so I had to find the best way of saying them.”

Grobet studied plastic arts at the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico and graphic design and photography in Britain at the Cardiff College of Art and Derby College for Higher Education.

She was very moved by her professor Mathias Goeritz, from whom she learned that mass media showed a new way of expression.

When Goeritz gave up teaching, he asked Grobet to be his assistant while he worked on stained glassed windows for the México City Cathedral.

Grobet studied as a painter in Mexico for some time and then took a trip to Paris in 1968; it changed her life and the way that she viewed the art world.

While she was in Paris, Grobet visited many art galleries and discovered kinetic art; because of this, she liked working with multimedia.

She spent some time working at a jazz concert, controlling lighting and kinetic projections.

When Grobet returned to Mexico, she decided that she wanted to focus on photography; after she got back home, she decided to burn all of her old work and start over.

Since 1975, she has published more than 11,000 photographs of the sport, including those on the sport in the United States since the 1930s, and as an important part of Mexican popular culture, adopting a sociological attitude.

She studied in England in 1977 and did a few landscape paintings.

She ended up failing, however, because the photography faculty did not like that she altered the landscape and strayed away from keeping it purely documentary.

Kati Horna introduced Grobet to the world of photography, though the main influences in her early career were Mathias Goeritz, Gilberto Aceves Navarro, El Santo and others.

At the beginning of her career in photography, she was part of a group called Consejo Mexicano de Fotografía (Mexican Council of Photography), formed by Pedro Meyer in 1977.

With her participation in this group, she was able to revitalize photography in Mexico, which led to a movement called the Grupos.

Grobet was focused on establishing a community-based perspective.

Grobet spent some time with indigenous people during a time of great struggle for them.

She took the time to learn more about them and photograph them in a theatrical way.

She wanted to relate to indigenous people using her artistic initiative, so they made costumes and scenery of their own and she then took their photos.

Later on, Grobet took interest in the Mayan culture.

Wanting to learn more about the Mayans she went to the suburbs; while this was not a common thing to do, she wanted to steer clear of any tourists.

She wanted to get accurate information about the people she documented and explore an area less traveled.

She discovered temples that were made by an unknown civilization and she decided they were to be called the Olmayazetec.

After her education and her travels, Grobet came back to México City.

She once again started to explore her childhood interest of luchadores.

She found that there was very little information pertaining to the luchadores, and so she decided that she wanted to make them more known to the world.

Grobet spent thirty years devoted to taking pictures of the luchadores and studying their way of life.

She spent time photographing lucha libre wrestlers inside and outside of the ring, both in their masks, but also in their own homes.

Grobet wanted to show that they lived normal lives, just like everyone else.

She got very close with well known Lucha Libre wrestlers such as: El Santo, Blue Demon, Mil Mascaras, Sagrada, Octagon, Misioneros de la Muerte, Los Perros del Mal, and Los Brazos.

Influenced greatly by Mathias Goeritz, the Polish sculptor from Gdańsk, and by Gilberto Aceves Navarro, a Mexican master of art murals, who were her teachers, Grobet worked on pictures of El Santo, one of the most important Mexican wrestlers, and a hero of lucha libre who starred in more than 50 films.

In 1981 Grobet released her first set of photographs.