Latina and Chicano Art Sightings at Witte Museum and McNay Art Museum Part II–Womanish Exhibit
Another of San Antonio’s prominent museums is introducing San Antonians to contemporary art by women artists in the McNay Art Museum permanent collection.
The McNay's superb exhibit, “Womanish: Audacious, Courageous, Willful Art,” opened on March 3. The exhibit includes works by Mexican photographer Graciela Iturbide and works on paper by Chicana artists Judy Baca, Sonia Romero, Melanie Cervantes, Barbara Carrarsco, Patssi Valdez, and Shizu Saldamando. In addition, six radiant “Pan Dulce” oil canvases by Eva Marengo Sanchez complete the Latina representation in the exhibit.
Judy Baca, “Danza de la Tierra.” Gift of Harriett and Ricardo Romo. Photo by Ricardo Romo.
Judy Baca, perhaps the most widely known Chicana artist in the McNay show, was born in Central Los Angeles and as a young child moved to Pacoima in the San Fernando Valley. In elementary school, she only spoke Spanish. She worked to improve her drawing skills when she was sent to the corner of the classroom for not speaking English. She learned English quickly and eventually earned two degrees from California State University, Northridge.
Baca is one of the nation’s leading artists, but what she valued most was the opportunity to teach young artists and conduct artistic research. Three campuses of the University of California System have given her a platform to teach and continue her artistic development. As a Full Professor of Chicano/a Studies and World Arts and Cultures for the past 29 years, she has taught and conducted artistic projects at UCLA that have won international acclaim.
Another well-established Chicana artist from Los Angeles is also included in the McNay exhibit. Sonia Romero’s black and white print with red roses in the heart of a woman lying down meets the exhibition criteria of work that is courageous and willful. At age 43, Romero is one of the youngest artists in the exhibit.
Romero was born in Los Angeles and earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the Rhode Island School of Design where she studied printmaking. She is the daughter of two painters, Nancy Wyle and Frank Romero. We first met Sonia Romero in 2013 when her work was included in the McNay exhibit Estampas De La Raza: The Romo Collection. At the time she shared a studio with her Chicano artist father, Frank Romero, making her a second-generation artist portraying Chicano/Chicana life and culture. Since finishing her training in Rhode Island, Romero has devoted her creative time to painting murals and to print making in Los Angeles. Her studio work includes mixed media linocut prints. Both her studio and mural work show an influence of Latin American, Mexican, and Chicano artists. We visited Sonia five years ago when she shared a studio with her father Frank. Today, she has her own studio, She Rides The Lion, in the Highland Park community of Northeast Los Angeles.
Los Angeles KCET television cultural reporter, Shana Nys Dambrot described Romero’s art work as “deeply personal, deliberately accessible modern traditionalism, expressing itself in the romantic, thorny, fabulist urban storytelling that has made her one of the brightest rising stars in the local visual-culture firmament.”
The McNay exhibit incorporates the work of Latina and Chicana artists into themes representing identity, the environment, home and family life, and demonstrates how their work relates to similar themes addressed by women of different ages and ethnicities.
These two exciting exhibits and several others that recently opened at Blue Star, San Antonio Museum of Art, Ruby City, and Centro Cultural Aztlan are examples of the rich artistic ambiance of our city that has made national commenters declare San Antonio as the “cultural capital of Texas.”