RICARDO ROMO’S TEJANO REPORT 2.14.25 PRINTS AT THE SAN ANTONIO MUSEUM OF ART

Prints by Chicano/a and Latino Artists at the San Antonio Museum of Art Educate and Delight

Ricardo Romo, Ph.D

Texas Latino art is in vogue this winter with shows in San Antonio, Houston, Corpus Christi, and the Dallas metroplex. I rely on my Latino art network to keep me informed on upcoming shows. I also rely on Glasstire, one of Texas’ premier art magazines, which appears weekly online. Their weekly reviews are stimulating and informative. Glasstire art writers review exhibits from across the state and each week select the week’s “Top Five.”

The Glasstire selection of the San Antonio Museum of Art [SAMA] exhibit, “Lovers & Fighters: Prints by Latino Artists in the SAMA Collection” as a “Top Five” gave Harriett and me great joy since the majority of art prints in the exhibition came from our art donation of nearly 500 Latino/Chicano prints to SAMA going back 20 years. The current exhibit was curated by Lana Meador, a specialist in American art. This is “Round Four” of “Lovers & Fighters” which has presented a total of 36 prints–with 29 of the prints drawn from the Romo collection. The other seven prints were donated by artists, museums, and Latino art collectors.
The current exhibit features images of love, power, and resistance. The SAMA curators selected romantic couples, heart motifs, boxers, and wrestlers. These images, noted Meador, “evoke ‘lovers’ and ‘fighters’ and serve as points of departure to explore these seemingly opposing concepts.” Some images, such as that of Emma Tenayuca created and donated by artist and scholar Amalia Mesa-Bains, are straight forward portraits. Others are more complicated.

Vincent Valdez’s “From the Series: America’s Finest.” represents an intriguing concept. Valdez has long been enamored with boxing figures and prizefighting imagery. But his painting in “Lovers & Fighters”is not your usual boxer. Valdez’s figure is an American Indian with a feathered headdress and boxing gloves. Arrows penetrate his body throughout. The figure closely resembles Saint Sebastian, a 3rd century Roman soldier and Christian martyr, who is often portrayed as captured with his body pierced with arrows.

Vincent Valdez grew up in San Antonio and studied at the Rhode Island School of Design. He now lives in Houston but also has a studio in Los Angeles. He currently has a show at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston. Harriett and I last saw his stunning painting “The City” at the Musée du quai Branly-Jacques Chirac in Paris in 2024 on loan from the UT Austin Blanton Museum.

One of the more powerful images in the exhibit is by Carlos Francisco Jackson and is titled “Departure: Braceros Departing Mexico City for California, 1943.” During World War II, the United States gravely needed agricultural and industrial workers as millions of the most able American men and women were serving in the US military. While American women filled the industrial and manufacturing labor void, the planting and harvesting of the nation’s crops fell largely to unskilled labor from Mexico. Thus, a major phase of current Mexican migration patterns to the US began when large agricultural companies were allowed to recruit workers in Mexico for seasonal labor. The Bracero Program began in 1943 and Mexican workers contributed throughout the US war effort as they harvested the crops that fed American families and provided food for US military bases. The use of Mexican Bracero workers continued until 1964 when President Lyndon Johnson terminated the labor program, but many employers enabled their loyal workers to remain in the US.

MFA in Painting from the University of California, Davis. He also earned an MA in Visual Critical Studies from the California College of the Arts. While a Professor in Chicano/a Studies at UC Davis, Jackson founded the Taller Arte del Nuevo Amanecer (TANA), a Chicano community art center that worked closely with California artist Malaquias Montoya. TANA sought to foster cultural expression and social justice through art. Jackson is also the author of Chicana and Chicano Art: ProtestArte (2009), a critical exploration of Chicano art as a tool for activism. He served as a professor and chair in the Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies at UC Davis before becoming the Dean of the Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design at the University of Michigan in 2022.

The SAMA curators referenced the exhibition artists’ “depictions of familial bonds, spiritual devotion, gender and sexuality, political activism, reverence for cultural leaders, and the celebration of cultural heritage.” Ruth Buentello’s work “Spring Love Come Back to Me,” meets the curators criteria of including “depictions of familial bonds.” Buentello’s serigraph was part of Sam Coronado’s Serie Project, which also included her serigraph Baby Daddy, Spring Love Come Back to Me (2012). Her work exemplifies engagement with themes of family, identity, and community building through printmaking.

Buentello is a San Antonio visual artist and arts educator with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the Art Institute of Chicago. She is a descendant of Mexican immigrants and her art emphasizes Mexican and Chicano working-class narratives. Buentello has received significant recognition, including the prestigious 2017 Joan Mitchell Painters and Sculptors Grant. Her work has been exhibited at prominent institutions such as the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery where she was a finalist in the 2019 Outwin Boochever National Portrait Competition. Xavier Garza is a Lucha Libre [Mexican wrestling] fan, but I believe the baseball term “triple hitter” best describes him. He is a triple hitter because he paints and teaches, and has written and illustrated over twenty published books. Garza’s ”El Mil Mascaras” print in the current “Lovers & Fighters” exhibit stands out for its portrayal of action and its imposing application of color.

Garza is a native of Rio Grande City, a borderland community, but he has lived in San Antonio for the past 25 years. His South Texas community is rich in folklore and Mexican culture, and he was fortunate to be brought up by an extended family that preserved his Mexican heritage and valued storytelling. He demonstrated an early talent in drawing and a fascination with Mexican wrestling–lucha libre.

The Texas-Mexico Borderlands are filled with traditional Mexican and contemporary Chicano stories and lore. Garza’s hometown, Rio Grande City, is situated on the Rio Grande across the border from the Mexican town of Camargo. As a teen Garza often ventured across the US-Mexico border–a 30 minute walk– to see lucha libre fights and enjoy a sampling of Mexican cuisine and culture, and his art work reflects those experiences. In his paintings, storytelling, and illustrated books Garza is a master of the borderland narrative.

Garza, who is currently a San Antonio middle school art teacher, received his Bachelor of Fine Arts [BFA] degree from the University of Texas-Pan American in 1994 and a Master of Arts [MA] in Art History from UTSA in 2007.

SAMA Curator Lana Meador drew from the museum’s print collection for the “Lovers & Fighters” exhibit seeking to show that the “focus on printmaking also demonstrates the medium’s influence on Latino art history.” The Taller de Grafica Popular in Mexico City gained international standing in the 1930s because the collective included artists Diego Rivera, David A. Siqueiros, Leopoldo Menedez, and Raul Anguiano. This prominent Mexican taller influenced the creation of
Latino print galleries in the US beginning in the 1970s, notably Self Help Graphics in Los Angeles, Coronado Studios in Austin, and Rene H. Arceo studios in Chicago. The SAMA print collection now includes works from all of these print studios. The “Lovers & Fighters” exhibition series has rotated four sets of different prints from April 2024 through April 2025 and has presented viewers with an exciting selection of Chicano works on paper.

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Copyright 2025 by Ricardo Romo. Photo credits as indicated.