Mexican crafts

Alebrijes.

The colors, joy, charm and mysticism of Mexico are reflected in their crafts, which are beautiful and colorful, especially the alebrijes that are fantastic, surreal and some monstrous creatures, which combine elements of different animals, both real and fictitious.

I remember one time an art teacher told us that in general the alebrijes are made up of animals that you like and animals that you are afraid of or are not at all to your liking.

These beings are made of paper or wood, painted with vibrant colors and very striking, and can be found in different sizes; tiny to gigantic.

There is no rule to perform a alebrije because everything is allowed, everything depends on the imagination of who creates it.The word alebrije is the combination of: joy, witch and embije (paint or dye with bija which is a natural reddish dye).

There are different versions of the birth of these crafts but in general Pedro Linares is recognized as the original creator of these figures, who in 1936 became seriously ill and fell into a kind of coma,  was at that moment when in a dream, he came across beings made up of different animals and that produced a sound which Pedro Linares understood as "alebrijes", when he woke up he explained to his family but they did not understand, until the moment he recreated these animals with cardboard and called them alebrijes, and Mexico and the world knew them.