Carmen Lomas Garza: “Picturing the Familiar” Opening at Arizona State University
Carmen Lomas Garza, Nopalitos para Ti. Collection of the artist. Courtesy Carmen Lomas Garza. © 1989, Carmen Lomas Garza.
On May 2, the Arizona State University [ASU] Art Museum opened an exciting exhibit, “Carmen Lomas Garza: Picturing the Familiar, ” the first major retrospective of this pioneering Mexican American artist in more than two decades. Born in Kingsville, Texas, Carmen Lomas Garza is an artist, educator, and illustrator whose depictions of everyday Mexican American life have become deeply embedded in the cultural imagination across generations.
Carmen Lomas Garza, Lessons, 1989. Collection of the artist. Courtesy Carmen Lomas Garza. © 1976, Carmen Lomas Garza.
Alana Hernandez, Senior ASU Curator, with Natalie Solis, ASU Latinx Curatorial Fellow, submit that Garza’s work has profoundly shaped how Mexican American histories, traditions and values are seen, remembered, and passed down.
Carmen Lomas Garza came of age in Kingsville, Texas, a small, rural town nestled in the heart of South Texas. Kingsville, just a hundred miles from the U.S.-Mexico border, became the emotional and geographical anchor for much of Garza’s artwork.
Garza became interested in art at an early age. She wrote that at age thirteen she decided to become a visual artist, adding that “The Chicano Movement of the late 1960s inspired the dedication of my creativity to the depiction of special and everyday events in the lives of Mexican Americans based on my memories and experiences in South Texas.”
Carmen Lomas Garza, Las Pachucas, Razor Blade ’do, 1993. Private Collection. Courtesy Carmen Lomas Garza. © 1993, Carmen Lomas Garza.
Her college art studies led her to recognize a purpose and value for creating art. In her recent Artist Statement, she wrote that she desired “to create images that would elicit recognition and appreciation among Mexican Americans, while at the same time serve as a source of education for others not familiar with our culture.”
Carmen Lomas Garza, Don Pedrito Jaramillo, Falfurrias, TX, 1829–1907, 1976. (Copper) Courtesy Carmen Lomas Garza. © 1976, Carmen Lomas Garza.
South Texas was a wellspring of memory and meaning that infuses her intricate and vibrant scenes, noted the ASU curators. Before her relocation to San Francisco in 1976, Garza had critically developed the essence of her creative career, visually capturing the Tejano (Texan Mexican) and Chicano cultural experiences for broader educational purposes.
Carmen Lomas Garza, Curandera, 1977. Collection of the artist. Courtesy Carmen Lomas Garza. © 1977, Carmen Lomas Garza.
Garza’s most popular books, In My Family / En mi familia, and A Piece of My Heart / Pedacito de mi corazón, have sold a total of 1.1 million copies. In My Family presents childhood memories in Kingsville, Texas, through paintings and short stories. The book, A Piece of My Heart, a long-overdue introduction to an important Chicana artist and the cultural world she depicts. Both books have been used extensively in elementary and middle schools across the Southwest.
Carmen Lomas Garza, Camas para Sueños, 1989. Collection of the artist. Courtesy Carmen Lomas Garza. © 1987, Carmen Lomas Garza.
Garza painted memorable artworks, many of which are collected by the Smithsonian and other major museums, but she was also a trailblazer in promoting Chicano and Mexican art. Alana Hernandez, the Senior Curator of the ASU exhibit, documents Garza’s 50-year contribution by noting that in 1975, Garza and several other artists formed a new artists’ group, Los Quemados, and staged their first exhibition on June 20 at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas.
Constance Cortez, Carmen Lomas Garza. UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center. Collection of Ricardo Romo.
Until recently, many had missed Garza’s prominent role in introducing the iconic Frida Kahlo to the US and much of the rest of the world. After visiting the fabulous Frida show in Houston earlier this year, I wrote an article about Frida, confirming that Garza was a key member of the planning committee when the Galería de la Raza presented Homenaje a Frida Kahlo: El Día de los Muertos in 1978.
The year after moving to San Francisco, Garza painted her first works in the South Texas series, Cuarandera, [1977]. Harriett and I met Garza in 1985, shortly after she had completed several of her Sandia [watermelon] paintings. She gave us a tour of her home in the Mission District of San Francisco, and we were able to purchase several of her prints. We have since donated these works to the McNay Art Museum, the San Antonio Museum of Art, and the San Antonio Public Library so that San Antonio residents, students, and young artists can become familiar with her work.
The ASU curators note that Garza’s work also dwells on quieter domestic rituals: cleaning nopales, slicing open watermelons, or participating in healing ceremonies passed down through generations. These are acts of cultural endurance, depicted not merely as quaint customs or “relentlessly idyllic” but as profound markers of identity and belonging.
Carmen Lomas Garza, Heaven and Hell II, 1991. Collection of the artist. Courtesy Carmen Lomas Garza. © 1991, Carmen Lomas Garza.
A beautiful catalog produced by the ASU Museum is both highly informative and a visual feast. The catalog included an essay I thoroughly enjoyed by Claudia Zapata. Zapata, the Latinix curator for the UT Austin Blanton Museum, reflected on Garza’s artistic achievements. Zapata wrote in the exhibition catalog: “The artist’s wide success can be attributed to her nostalgic, vibrant scenes, in prints and paintings, which highlight Mexican American cultural events such as quinceañeras, birthdays, and religious traditions.”
Zapata argues that Garza “relied on Texas” to shape her defining artistic career. According to Zapata, “looking back and recognizing Garza’s formative moments in her artistic development properly contextualizes the foundation of her expansive career.
Art historians acknowledge that Garza’s transformative college years at Texas A&I in Kingsville, 1964–72, were critical years that defined Garza politically and artistically. While in Kingsville, Garza and many of her fellow students participated in campus events and discussions about the Vietnam War, the United Farm Workers’ boycott of lettuce and grapes, and ways to advance the causes of social justice and equality in American society. Garza recalled that the campus activists recruited art students to create posters and signs for their demonstration and organizing efforts.
The influence of the Chicano Movement gave Garza both purpose and voice. An example is her well-known imagery of tamalada scenes: women gathered in kitchens, children nearby, food preparation as both labor and celebration. These works are not just nostalgic—they document cultural practices and encode values of family, cooperation, and continuity.
Carmen Lomas Garza, [Baile in South Texas]. Donation by Harriett and Ricardo Romo to the San Antonio Public Library.
The UCLA Chicano Studies Press published Cortez’s Carmen Lomas Garza book with the guidance of Professor Chon A.Noriega. Noriega noted that Garza’s “art takes the form of personal memory within a visual “folk” idiom, suggesting a sharp contrast with modern art that is understood as a break with the past, with traditions, and with religion.
When Carmen Lomas Garza relocated to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1976, she began her professional artistic career at Galería de la Raza (GDLR). Garza initially volunteered at the Galería, then transitioned into a part-time staff role before securing California Arts Council Artist-in-Residence grants that allowed her to deepen her involvement. She later described her time there as “the best education that I’ve ever gotten.”
Carmen Lomas Garza, Nopalitos para Ti, 1989. Collection of the artist. Courtesy Carmen Lomas Garza. © 1989, Carmen Lomas Garza.
At the Galería, despite structural challenges within the organization, Garza carved out a space for herself as a curator, arts administrator, and leading Chicana artist—an experience that equipped her with the skills, networks, and visibility to sustain a full-time artistic practice in San Francisco beginning in 1981. Bringing her South Texas experiences to the Bay Area, Garza cultivated Galería de la Raza’s evolving legacy, particularly in its annual Día de los Muertos programming and community-centered exhibitions. Through this work, Garza positioned herself not only as an artist but also as a cultural organizer and advocate for “Raza arts” on both statewide and national levels.
Carmen Lomas Garza’s art has been widely described as documenting Mexican-American life. Chon Noriega adds that through her South Texan lens, “Garza challenges mainstream narratives, giving her work specificity and strength and affirming the complexity and dignity of the communities she portrays.” Her children’s books, widely used in schools, have influenced and will continue to influence new generations.
Overall, Carmen Lomas Garza stands out as a visual historian of Mexican-American life, using visual stories to preserve cultural memory, foster pride, and expand representation in American art. Regardless of the medium and the subject matter, Garza remains keenly aware that her art is a dialogue. Chon Noriega observes that, “Like all dialogues, it is a two-way process. Through her art, she conveys to the viewer a message about the past and the presenT.
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Copyright 2026 by Ricardo Romo. All image credits as indicated.