Color Me Art
Chicano Artists on Display at Molaa
From the Press Release issued by Museum of Latin American Art:
Somewhere Over El Arco Iris/Chicano Landscapes, 1971-2015, is MOLAA’s first exhibition to present works solely by Southern California-based Chicano artists. The exhibition contains 25 artworks including two seminal paintings by Frank Romero and Carlos Almaraz. Julian Bermudez, guest curator, has organized an exhibition that touches on a critical period in art history when Chicano artists were trying to define and express themselves while the LA art scene, as a whole, was redefining the boundaries of contemporary artistic expression. This exhibition is a fraction of the diverse range of media and styles seen in Chicano art. It’s not meant to illustrate a survey of the entire Chicano Art Movement.
Wayne Healy and David Botello, LA Fiesta/Broadway, 1993
Patssi Valdez, The Glass, 1990
Johnny KMNDZ Rodriguez, Atascado, 2015
Carlos Almaraz, Yellow Morning, 1986
Through the presentation of landscapes spanning 40 years- from traditional to avant-garde interpretations- this exhibition will introduce audiences to this unique school of American art. Featured in the exhibitions are paintings, drawings, photo-based and mixed media artworks, and rare studies by artists such as Carlos Almaraz, Yolanda Gonzalez, Gronk, Wayne Alaniz Healy and David Botello, Ramses Noriega, Frank Romero, Jamex and Einar de la Torre, John Valdez, Patssi Caldez, Sizu Salmando, Roberto Gutierrez, and Jose Ramirez, all vanguards of their respective generations.
Man One, Jaine “Germs” Zacarias, Vyal Reyes, and Johnny KMDZ Rodriguez- street artists whose creative expression may have been informed by those who preceded them, but whose work expands beyond the preoccupations of their trailblazing producers- have been invited to create new, original artworks inspired by some of the works on view in the exhibition. These artists represent a new generation of contemporary Chicano/Latino artists in Southern California and the United States.
In his essay Reflection on the Chicano Art Movimiento, A Primer, Armando Vasquez writes that modern American Art began as a closed shop, “racist, aloof, pretentious and elitist,” and would stay that way until the early 1950s, when Chicanos, Jews, Blacks, Native Americans, and women, by singular sheer artistic genius and courage, were able to penetrate this monolith known as “American art and culture.” Vasquez says the “wall of exclusion and segregation came tumbling down” in the 1960s.
This wall of exclusion began to fall first in Southern California- primarily in Los Angeles- where a fundamental shift in the cultural landscape was taking place. The birth of Chicano art coincided with the birth of LA as a center for contempary art and artistic innovation, specific to Southern California; art being made here was very different from the art being made on the East Coast or in Europe.
California experienced an era of significantt social change during the 1960s and 1970s. From the Free Speech Movement in 1964 and the Watts Riots in South Central Los Angeles in 1965 to the Chicano Moratorium in 1970, issues such as racial equality, education reform, environmental awareness and women’s rights were challenging established cultural canon. Inspired by social transformations, Chicano artists created unprecedented visual styles and presented highly conceptual forms of communication.
For more information on the exhibit and the museum, visit their website HERE.
