Style combination · Contrasts

Indian Calendar × Mexican Calendar Chromo

Both are give-away calendars that reproduce commissioned paintings above a sponsor's name, but Indian bazaar art centres a frontal deity in haloes, gold and ornamental frames for worship, while the Mexican chromo stages a secular scene in deep landscape (a legend, a charro, a film star, a pin-up) with no frame around it; its saints are one genre among many.

From the research on Mexican Calendar Chromo (Cromos calendáricos)

Mix them and make something Indian Calendar Mexican Calendar Chromo

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Indian Calendar, their arrangement from Mexican Calendar Chromo, the finish from Indian Calendar. Not a real work, and not an image of either style.

What each style brings

Each part of the design comes from the style with the stronger say in it, and each style gives at least two.

Indian Calendar & Bazaar Art Mexican Calendar Chromo (Cromos calendáricos)

Type from Indian Calendar: Hand-lettering
Colour from Mexican Calendar Chromo: Full polychrome
Gradients
Form from Indian Calendar: Naturalistic depiction
Abundant decoration

Mexican Calendar Chromo avoids abundant decoration: this is where the two pull against each other, which is the point of the contrast.
Composition from Mexican Calendar Chromo: Single focal point
Illusion of depth
Surface from Indian Calendar: Gloss & highlights
Painterly brushwork

The type

Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.

Display · Indian Calendar

Rose

Rozha One, standing in for Hand-drawn Devanagari display lettering

Text · Mexican Calendar Chromo

Mexico's give-away advertising calendars, at their height from the 1930s to the late 1960s. Printers led by Galas de México kept studios of painters, among them Jesús Helguera, Eduardo Cataño, Jorge González Camarena and Josep Renau, whose large oil paintings were printed by offset above a sponsor's name and a small calendar pad. In an idealising academic realism touched by Hollywood glamour they staged Aztec legends as melodrama, charros and chinas poblanas, saints, film stars and pin-ups, and hung all year in homes, shops and workshops.

Archivo; Mexican Calendar Chromo used The sponsor's name and address overprinted in the band left blank below the picture and Brand logotypes painted into the picture or carried on the product

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Mexican Calendar Chromo, with a counter-accent from Indian Calendar. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Indian Calendar & Bazaar Art Mexican Calendar Chromo (Cromos calendáricos)

#f0c4a8 ground · 36%
#1f4e8c ink · 14%
#c8372d accent · 18%
#e8822a accent · 14%
#a8693f accent · 10%
#3d8b4f accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #f0c4a8;
  --ink: #1f4e8c;
  --accent-1: #c8372d;
  --accent-2: #e8822a;
  --accent-3: #a8693f;
  --accent-4: #3d8b4f;
  --font-display: "Rozha One", serif;
  --font-text: "Archivo", sans-serif;
}

Use it with care

Indian Calendar & Bazaar Art: These are devotional images that many viewers worship, so do not crop, distort or deface deities or place them on footwear, floors, underwear or in mocking contexts. Many original painters went uncredited; name the artist and press where known.

Mexican Calendar Chromo (Cromos calendáricos): The Aztec scenes are a nationalist fantasy of the pre-Hispanic past painted by academically trained artists, several of them born or raised in Spain, not Indigenous art: do not present them as Nahua or Mexica tradition or copy their feathered costumes as if they were ethnography. The saints and the Virgin of Guadalupe are devotional images that many owners pray before, so do not parody them, and the pin-ups were painted, as a UNAM study of the Galas archive puts it, to satisfy male longing and promote the sponsors' brands, carrying old and new stereotypes of women. The paintings are still in copyright (Helguera died in 1971) and Grupo Carso holds the rights to the Galas archive, while Alta reported in 2023 that Calendarios Landin owns the rights to Helguera, so paint new pictures in the manner rather than retouching old chromos.

The two styles

1878–present · South Asia Indian Calendar & Bazaar Art Mass-printed images of Hindu deities, epic scenes, saints, nationalist heroes and film stars, sold in bazaars and given away as business calendars, from the chromolithographs of the Calcutta Art Studio and Ravi Varma Press to Sivakasi offset. Frontal, idealised figures painted with academic naturalism glow against dreamy landscapes, in saturated colour with gold, haloes and ornate frames above the sponsor's name and calendar pad.

A painted-style poster shows a smiling woman in a floral embroidered blouse and blue skirt seated beside wicker baskets of harvested agave hearts. Agave plants, a town with a domed church, and distant mountains fill the background beneath the red and gold word “Agave.”

1930–1970 · Latin America & Caribbean Mexican Calendar Chromo (Cromos calendáricos) Mexico's give-away advertising calendars, at their height from the 1930s to the late 1960s. Printers led by Galas de México kept studios of painters, among them Jesús Helguera, Eduardo Cataño, Jorge González Camarena and Josep Renau, whose large oil paintings were printed by offset above a sponsor's name and a small calendar pad. In an idealising academic realism touched by Hollywood glamour they staged Aztec legends as melodrama, charros and chinas poblanas, saints, film stars and pin-ups, and hung all year in homes, shops and workshops.

More combinations

With Indian Calendar

All 14 combinations with Indian Calendar

With Mexican Calendar Chromo

All 13 combinations with Mexican Calendar Chromo

Every style combination