Latinx 

Throughout the 20th century, Latin American, or Latinx, artists were, for the most part, excluded from dominant accounts of art history. While there are several famous names among the pantheon of what were known as “Hispanic” artists who managed to attain renown—including the likes of Pablo Picasso, Francisco Goya, Salvador Dali, and Diego Velázquez—nearly all, excluding Frida Kahlo, are male, and most hail from Spain.

This myopic focus has excluded artists from throughout the Latinx diaspora, including Mexico, Central, and South America, the Caribbean, and Latinx artists from the United States, as well as the history and culture that has supported and inspired such art. Just as more “traditional” Western art can trace its roots to the Renaissance and the Reformation, a rich, Pre-Columbian heritage dating back to the Aztecs and Mayans has served as the inspiration and historical tradition of Latinx art for centuries. Thankfully, in recent years there has been a renewal of interest in these artists, especially those whose works focus on Latinx history and the provenance of its cultural traditions.

Some of the most influential Latinx artists of recent times have been muralists. Two who were contemporaries are Diego Rivera and José Clemente Orozco. Both are Mexican and were born within three years of each other in the mid-1880s. Rivera was classically trained, studying in Mexico City and Europe, and his works focused on the struggles of indigenous and working-class peoples, along with interest in Marxist ideologies. Rivera is most famous for his murals, which were heavily influenced by Mayan and Aztec imagery, and his marriage to Frida Kahlo, an influential Mexican painter. Similarly, Orozco, who lost his left hand to an accident just as he began his formal artistic training, became famous for murals featuring themes of suffering and political messages about workers, peasants, and social justice. Together, the works of Rivera and Orozco continue to inspire muralists the world over.

More recently, the murals of Judy Baca have garnered significant recognition. Baca has spent more than half a century as a painter, teacher, and social activist. One of Baca’s most famous and ambitious works is “The Great Wall of Los Angeles,” a half-mile-long mural along a channel feeding the Los Angeles River in the San Fernando Valley that tells the history of California from prehistoric days through the 1950s with special focus on the history of ethnic peoples of California. Production of the Great Wall employed over 400 youth and their families from diverse social and economic backgrounds working with artists, oral historians, ethnologists, scholars, and hundreds of community members. Baca has recently received a grant to expand the mural to more than twice its current size.

The renewed focus on Baca’s work is ironic considering that for much of her long career, her work was ignored by more traditionalist historians, curators, and critics, who discounted it as not “real” art. Baca’s work now commands a flurry of interest from worldwide galleries, including from some of the same curators who discounted her early projects and are now competing to display her works. And Baca’s work isn’t alone in garnering long-overdue recognition. In June 2022, Cheech Marin, of the famous comedy duo Cheech and Chong, opened a museum in Riverside, California, dedicated to Chicano art and culture that is believed to be the nation’s first and largest permanent collection of Mexican American Art. One mission of “The Cheech,” as it is known, is to help fill in informational gaps resulting from the traditional art world’s historical disregard of Chicano artists and their influences.

Closing this informational gap is critical to both Latinx culture, recognition of which is long overdue, and the history of art writ large. As Justice Murals helps promote the future opening of the new Mexican Museum in the Yerba Buena District of San Francisco, it is proud to help sponsor a long history of Latinx art with origins dating to the 16th century, if not earlier, and to bring awareness to the vibrant cultures and traditions such art displays.