RICARDO ROMO’S TEJANO REPORT 04.23.26 – TREVIÑO, GONZALEZ AND LUNA AT THE BLANTON

Latino Artists Treviño, Gonzalez, and Luna, Featured at UT Austin’s Blanton Museum

Latino Artists Treviño, Gonzalez, and Luna, Featured at UT Austin’s Blanton Museum

The UT Austin’s Blanton Museum of Art is currently featuring ten Chicano art prints from the Gilberto Cardenas-Dolores Garcia collection. Among the works on exhibit are prints by José Francisco Treviño, Luis C. Gonzalez, and Heriberto Luna, discussed in this story.

José Francisco Treviño spent his life painting his hometown of Austin and the surrounding region of Central Texas. He was committed to painting the Chicano experience– its struggles and cultural beauty.  In doing so, he helped define a Chicano artistic voice that never fully left the city that raised him.

Born in 1941 and raised in South Austin, Treviño showed an early instinct for drawing. As a child, he sketched political figures from the newspaper. At William B. Travis High School, his talent blossomed.  As a teen, he joined more seasoned artists selling his drawings and paintings on Guadalupe Street at the edges of the University of Texas campus. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Treviño’s path was largely self-directed. He developed his artistic style through observation, relentless practice, and a deep personal study of art history, forming a visual language that drew from Mexican muralism, surrealism, and the lived experience of Mexican American life.

In the 1960s and 1970s, Austin was not yet recognized as a center for Chicano art. But in the years 1965-1975,  a new generation of Mexican American artists arrived in Austin and became creative strategists and leaders of the new Chicano Art Movement.  In the first wave, Carmen Lomas Garza, Santa Barraza, and Amado Pena, who had been undergraduates together at Texas A&M Kingsville in the late 1960s, joined muralist Raul Valdez in forming the League of United Chicano Artists [L.U.C.H.A], a Chicano art movement.  They participated in creative exercises with local Austin Chicanos Jose Treviño, Luis Guerra, and Luis Gutierrez.  After Garza and Barraza left Austin in the late 1970s, printer and painter Sam Coronado, a UT Austin graduate at the time, joined Treviño and his art associates to keep the Chicano arts fires burning.

In the following decade, Treviño was joined by Sylvia Orozco of Mexi-Arte and La Pena co-founders,  Cythnia and Lydia Perez.  Together, they began shaping a new design and momentum for a new cultural movement rooted in identity, resistance, and community. Treviño stood among them, a founding presence in the collective Los Quemados [the burned ones], a group born out of exclusion from mainstream exhibition spaces. Their work, like their name, spoke to both marginalization and creative fire.

Treviño’s most iconic image, Uno de los Quemados (1974), is a self-portrait engulfed in flames. Wearing the uniform of a working man, Treviño confronts the viewer directly.  The image represents a declaration of identity, tied to the collective he helped build and the broader Chicano movement that sought visibility and voice.

Luis C. Gonzalez—widely known as Louie “The Foot”—emerged from the vibrant cultural and political currents of the late twentieth-century Chicano movement as a distinctive artistic voice rooted in Sacramento, California.

Gonzalez’s work frequently engages themes of Chicano nationalism, mestizaje, and pre-Columbian cultural legacy. His ambition, as he has stated, was “to become a writer of Chicano stories,” a goal realized through the seamless integration of textual and visual forms.

Born in Mexico City in 1953, Gonzalez migrated with his family to Sacramento, where he came of age, completed his education, and began shaping a creative practice that fused visual art, language, and activism.

The nickname “Louie ‘The Foot’” originated from his habit of arriving on foot to marches and demonstrations, a gesture emblematic of his humility and dedication. That grounded sensibility extends into his daily life; for many years, he worked as a rural postal carrier, maintaining a direct and sustained connection to the communities that inform his art.

Gonzalez’s artistic trajectory began in the late 1960s, a formative period marked by social upheaval and the rise of Chicano cultural consciousness. Gonzalez was a founding member of the  Royal Chicano Air Force [RCAF], which developed a distinctive community spirit that blended satire, cultural pride, and political engagement. Art historian Carlos Francisco Jackson noted that, as members humorously mythologized their identity—claiming to “fly adobe airplanes” and adopting mock military ranks and regalia—the collective forged a powerful and accessible visual language rooted in community solidarity.

Within this environment, Gonzalez found both purpose and platform. His work is perhaps most closely associated with silkscreen posters produced in support of the United Farm Workers, which combined bold graphics with direct political messaging. His lifelong commitment to social justice—particularly labor rights and grassroots activism—remains a defining thread throughout his art.

Equally significant is Gonzalez’s innovative use of poetry. In his 1976 silkscreen “Cortés’ Poem,”  for example, Gonzalez employed wit and satire to interrogate the historical legacy of colonialism and its enduring role in shaping inequality for Mexican Americans. His silkscreen print, Just Another Poster? achieved particular prominence as the thematic image for a major national touring exhibition on Chicano graphic art, underscoring his central role within this tradition.

Through decades of sustained production, Luis C. Gonzalez has cultivated an art practice that is politically engaged, linguistically inventive, and deeply rooted in community. His work continues to affirm the power of cultural expression as both resistance and celebration.

Heriberto Luna, a Los Angeles–based Chicano artist born in Mexico City in 1976, has developed a body of work that bridges Maya iconography with contemporary experience. By incorporating pre-Columbian imagery alongside personal and cosmic elements, Luna embellishes pre-Columbian imagery with contemporary and personal elements.  Luna adds,  “I strive to embody the intersection of Mexico’s history, in all its depth and beauty, with the lived contexts of my era.”

Luna’s painting in the Blanton Museum, “The Universal Game,” uses an ancient Maya ballgame player to honor both the historical  Indigenous practice and his cultural heritage of Mayan descent. In his artist’s statement, Luna offers: “I ground my work in Mayan iconography, using richly textured backgrounds and a chromatically satisfying palette of complementary colors to draw viewers into the world of the painting.”

The Maya figure in Luna’s painting wears an elaborate, ornamented headdress, a protective yoke around his waist, and knee padding. Curator Claudia Zapatsa comments that “the rules and practices of the ballgame vary, with every aspect of the court and its associated rings and heavy rubber ball signifying the Maya’s interpretation of the cosmos and the mythological battles of the underworld.”  Luna details the figure with symbols based on ancient Maya hieroglyphs, further exploring Mayan history

Grounded in Mayan iconography, Luna’s paintings are distinguished by richly textured surfaces and a chromatically resonant palette of complementary colors that draw viewers into immersive visual worlds. Recurring motifs—such as the “cosmic hummingbird”—suggest transformation, migration, and spiritual endurance, linking ancient cosmologies to contemporary identity.

 Luna’s work also carries a ceremonial quality, merging personal mythology with collective memory and inviting reflection on humanity’s past, present, and future. Luna believes that by studying and teaching cultural ancestry, it becomes possible to recognize humanity’s strength and spiritual capacity and to imagine new futures grounded in that awareness.

Raised in East Los Angeles, Luna’s artistic development was influenced by muralism, community activism, and Indigenous traditions. Family narratives—of a grandmother remembered as a Mayan shaman and a grandfather aligned with the revolutionary legacy of Emiliano Zapata—form a symbolic foundation for his practice, reinforcing themes of resistance and spirituality.

At La Tierra de la Culebra, an urban art park in Northeast Los Angeles, Luna developed his skills as both an earth sculptor and painter, while also engaging deeply with Aztec dance and drumming. These formative experiences instilled discipline, cultural pride, and a sense of purpose. Between 2002 and 2005, he apprenticed on major mural projects with the influential East Los Streetscapers and artists Paul Botello and Margaret Garcia.

 Central to Heriberto Luna’s practice is his commitment to community engagement and mentorship. Through his teaching with organizations such as Theatre of Hearts, he has worked extensively with underserved youth, fostering artistic development and cultural awareness. His practice extends beyond the studio, functioning as both creative expression and cultural stewardship.

These three Chicano artists featured at the Blanton Museum represent a declaration of identity and struggle by Latino artists for visibility and voice. The artists affirm the power of cultural expression as both resistance and celebration. The exhibit educates viewers about cultural continuity and the transformative potential of art.

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Copyright 2026 by Ricardo Romo. All art credits as indicated.