Encouraging Initiatives of Chicano Art

Chicano art has existed for over fifty years in the United States, but until recently it has been virtually invisible to major museum audiences in the Southwest.  Chicanos produce outstanding art as revealed when The Getty Center invested $5 million in 2017 in research grants given to arts institutions across Southern California for research and planning of an ambitious exploration of Latin American and Latino art called “Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA.”  These exhibits gave Latinos and Chicanos a rare opportunity to share their art with a greater sector of art viewers. 

Jesse Treviño,  “Señora Dolores Treviño.”  Courtesy of the San Antonio Musuem of Art. Photo by Ricardo Romo.

  In 2022, Harriett and I visited five major museums in Los Angeles and saw little Chicano Art. This neglect was a surprise given that Latinos are the largest ethnic group in Los Angeles and California. Change comes slowly. The Getty Center in Los Angeles had a large painting by muralist Judy Baca. The Los Angeles County  Museum of Art organized an exciting Judy Baca solo exhibit in 2023.

Barbara Carrasco, “Primas.”  Gift of Harriett and Ricardo Romo. Courtesy of the San Antonio Museum of Art. Photo by Ricardo Romo.

In the United States, three major art museums, The Cheech Art Museum in Riverside, California;  the Hispanic Cultural Art Center in Albuquerque; and the National Mexican Museum in Chicago are dedicated solely to Latino and Chicano art.  Harriett and I have visited these museums over the years and their exhibits bring out the best of La Raza artists.  The Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C. also deserves mention. The Smithsonian began acquiring Latino art in the early 1980s and their Latino print holdings received significant attention in the 2020 publication  Printing the Revolution!: The Rise and Impact of Chicano Graphics [Princeton University Press]. That exhibit opened in Washington, D.C. and traveled to the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth, Texas. 

Printing the Revolution!: The Rise and Impact of Chicano Graphics [Princeton University Press].

Amalia Mesa-Bains’ altar of labor leader Emma Tenayuca at the San Antonio Museum of Art [SAMA] is a prime example of my 2024 random Latino art sightings.  Her retrospective exhibit, “Amalia Mesa-Bains: Archaeology of Memory,” can be seen in the museum’s large Cowden Gallery until January 12, 2025. As part of Mesa-Bains’ “Archaeology of Memory” exhibit, the artist returned to San Antonio in late October to construct the altar in honor of Tenayuca for the Day of the Dead celebration. 

Amalia Mesa-Bains,  Emma Tenayuca altar. Courtesy of the San Antonio Museum of Art. Photo by Ricardo Romo. 

Mesa-Bains, a native of Northern California,  is recognized as one of the founders of the Chicano Art Movement. She was among the first Chicana artists to create altars and related installations that went beyond the traditional home-based family altar, and she was among the first Latinas collected by the Smithsonian. Her “Ofrenda for Dolores Del Rio” installed at the Mexican Museum in San Francisco in 1984 and revised in 1991 was collected by the Smithsonian American Art Museum.  Mesa-Bains is a recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship (commonly known as a “genius grant”), the only Chicana visual artist to be recognized with this prestigious award. 

Santa Barraza, “Emma Tenayuca.” Courtesy of the San Antonio Museum of Art. Photo by Ricardo Romo. 

The small exhibit “Lovers and Fighters” at the San Antonio Museum of Art [SAMA] includes works on paper by California artists Frank Romero, Sonia Romero, Ignacio Gomez, Richard Duardo, Carlos Francisco Jackson, Maria Natividad, Barbara Carrasco, and Texas artist Rolando Briseno.  A dazzling print by Frank Romero featuring his widely recognized car images stands out in this exhibit. Harriett and I donated all of the prints in the  “Lovers and Fighters” exhibit over ten years, 2010-2020. Romero’s print, “Freeway Wars” is considered a classic in Chicano art. We bought a significant number of Chicano prints from  Richard Duardo, a Los Angeles artist and master printer, starting in 2000. Two stunning works by Duardo, a Mexican Luchador and the Cuban revolutionary leader Che Guevara, are also included in this SAMA exhibit.  

Frank Romero, “Freeway Wars.” Gift of Harriett and Ricardo Romo. Courtesy of the San Antonio Museum of Art. Photo by Ricardo Romo. 

Richard Duardo grew up in Highland Park, a Latino neighborhood adjacent to East Los Angeles.  He was one of my students when I taught at Franklin High School in Los Angeles. Duardo studied art and printing at the University of California Los Angeles and following his graduation worked closely with Sister Karen Boccalero, founder of Self Help Graphics in East Los Angeles. In the late 1980s, Duardo founded Modern Multiples and printed the works of hundreds of California artists including Frank Romero's freeway print currently in the “Lovers and Fighters” exhibit.   

Richard Duardo, “Luchador” [left] and  “Che Guevara.” [right] Gift of Harriett and Ricardo Romo. Courtesy of the San Antonio Museum of Art. Photo by Ricardo Romo. 

SAMA’s “Lovers and Fighters” exhibit includes a print by Rolando Briseño, “Bicultural Table Setting.”  Briseño’s artwork was printed by Sam Coronado, a master printer from Austin who in 1998 established  Coronado Studios. A major exhibit of Briseño's work,  “Rolando Briseño: A 50-Year Retrospective,” is currently at the Centro de Artes Gallery in San Antonio’s Market Square. While studying art at UT Austin in the early 1970s,  Briseño  joined the Con Safo art group and participated in his first Chicano show, a Con Safo exhibit in 1975 at the San Antonio Institute of Texan Cultures titled,  “La Movida: A Creative Perspective of Contemporary Humanities Iconography.”  

One of the best-known Chicano artworks at the SAMA museum is Jesse Treviño’s “Señora Dolores Treviño” [1982]. Treviño grew up in San Antonio’s Westside not far from Rolando Briseño's home.  In his early years, Treviño painted works related to his Westside community and his Chicano roots.  In 1997, more than 2,000 people gathered to witness the completion of Treviño’s mosaic tile mural,  “Spirit of Healing” on the huge outside wall of  Christus Santa Rosa Hospital.  In 2003, Treviño completed the fifty-foot-tall tile sculpture of the  Virgin of Guadalupe,  “Veladora,”  located at the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center.  Treviño’s murals are stunning, but his paintings are also exceptional and have been acquired by the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C. and SAMA.

Jesse Treviño, “Señora Dolores Treviño.”  Courtesy of the San Antonio Museum of Art. Photo by Ricardo Romo.

A small painting, “Juanito,” by Adan Hernandez of San Antonio hangs in a second-floor space  at SAMA next to Jesse Treviño’s “Señora Dolores.” SAMA curators note that “Juanito” is one of the paintings that San Antonio artist Adan Hernandez made for the 1993 film Blood In, Blood Out. The movie focused on the lives of three East Los Angeles Chicano relatives who early in their lives sought to live  “la vida loca” [the crazy life].  One brother, Cruz Candelaria, played by actor and fellow San Antonian Jesse Borrego, becomes an artist while his half-brother joins the L.A. Police force. Hernandez, who has a cameo role in the movie, painted nearly 30 paintings for the film. 

Adan Hernandez, “Juanito.” Courtesy of the San Antonio Museum of Art. Photo by Ricardo Romo.

Adan Hernandez was born in 1952 near Robstown, Texas where his migrant-laborer family worked in the cotton fields. At age nine, Hernandez and his family moved to San Antonio where he attended school in the Edgewood District.  In his twenties, Hernandez took art classes at San Antonio College,  but he always considered himself a self-taught artist.  In 1991, the Museum of Modern Art [MOMA] in New York purchased two of his paintings establishing him as only the second artist after Luis Jimenez to be in the MOMA prestigious collection. [Ruben Cordova research]

Celeste de Luna, Ricky Armendariz, and Al Rendon at the Queretaro Art Museum opening. Photo by Ricardo Romo.

A recent exhibit of Chicano art in  Queretaro, Mexico, “El Otro Lado del Espejo” [The Other Side of the Mirror], drew 7,000 visitors during its opening month at the Queretaro Museum of Art in the city’s historic district. The exhibit, organized by San Antonio artists  Lionel and Kathy Sosa, validates that Chicano art is appreciated beyond the United States borders.  We welcome future exhibits of Chicano art and exchanges of this type, and we expect to see regional art exchanges curated by museums and galleries.