The Mexican School of Art Down was created as an adventure to promote education based on the development of symbolic comprehension, expression and creation. It first emerged as a recreational activity, later as a workshop and, finally, as formal education, which guided us through the extraordinary path of art creation. The Mexican School of Down Art is, currently, the Foundation’s keystone program, where true artistic creations come to life. It has more than 200 valuable works of art, which have been recognized by national and international artists, and exhibited in different forums in Mexico, United States, Canada, and Europe.

Symbolic expression has allowed our young people to turn their language deficits into shapes and colors through different materials and fine arts creation techniques such as oil painting, mixed techniques, engraving, and lithography. With their brushes, these artists succeed in expressing their feelings and emotions, their dreams, their desires and frustrations; their wishes and late hopes. Art is, undoubtedly, also a means through which they reassert their identity and boost self-esteem.

We have discovered, through the Mexican School of Down Art, that education opens the doors to a rich world of great accomplishment, which fosters the development of all the skills of a person, and where artistic skills are not the exception. People with Down syndrome make us look at a life more deeply; if we spend time with them and succeed in fathoming their way of looking at the world, they may help us reassess our essential values. Behind their visible shortcomings the strength of the human spirit emerges, the creative skills that go beyond the mechanisms of intelligence and that permeate everything with a light that only they can give us: to enjoy life with no restrictions.

GOALS

• Foster the development of abstract thinking through artistic work.

• Stimulate expression and communication through fine arts.

• Promote full participation of people with Down syndrome in society.

• Sensitize society regarding artistic skills of people with Down syndrome