RICARDO ROMO’S TEJANO REPORT 7.09.26 JACINTO GUEVARA’S ART DOCUMENTS BARRIO LIFE

Chicano art originated in the late 1960s and early 1970s as a means to fill an artistic void in American art. Artistically, the Chicano artists painted murals that protested the Vietnam War, promoted the United Farm Workers’ labor movement, and challenged their status as second-class citizens living in a world filled with racial and ethnic inequality and social injustice. Geographically, Chicano art had many points of conception, but among the more prominent areas were San Diego and Los Angeles in California, San Antonio and South Texas, the San Francisco Bay Area, and the Midwest area surrounding Chicago.

Today, art lovers can appreciate the evolution of Chicano Art over the past fifty years by viewing exhibitions at the Cheech Museum in Riverside, California. On May 30, 2026, the Cheech Museum opened a splendid new show, We the People: Chicano Art in the U.S.A. curated by artist Benito Huerta with Cheech Marin’s conceptual contributions.

Benito Huerta commented that the exhibit recognizes Chicanos as an important segment of the American experience. He wrote: “We are integral to the fabric of our country: the culture, the politics, the social strata, the economics, and, of course, American art. We’ve been here since Aztlán, since Mexico, through shifting borders and histories, and now within these United States.” Huerta added that while “we are still challenged as to where our home resides, our home is here. Our life is here. Our destiny is here no matter what anyone says.”

 

Huerta chose sixty-one Chicano artists for the We the People exhibit, displaying 126 works of art. He noted, “The most pressing concerns we are wrestling with are identity, migration, and immigration, in which we are often perceived as criminals to be rounded up like the usual suspects, detained and deported.” Artists who chronicled the Chicano urban experience were also selected and featured. Among them is Jacinto Guevara of San Antonio, Texas.

A simultaneous exhibition of Guevara’s artwork is in Texas, at San Antonio’s Dock Space Gallery owned by artist Bill Fitzgibbons. The Gallery in San Antonio’s Lone Star Art District is best understood as an artist-run space devoted to contemporary art and to giving local and Texas-based artists a visible platform in a neighborhood arts setting.

Guevara chose Dock Space because the gallery functions as part of a larger creative ecosystem in Southtown: a place where artists, visitors, and the community can gather around new work, shared conversation, and regional artistic production. At the same time, the gallery fits into the Lone Star District’s wider vision of becoming a walkable, mixed-use cultural destination that honors the neighborhood’s historic character while adding art, open space, and pedestrian-friendly public life.

Guevara was born in Los Angeles and moved to La Puente, California soon after his birth. At age six, his family moved to the Maravilla Housing Projects in East Los Angeles. Guevara grew up drawing on scraps of paper, encouraged by his parents but largely self-taught. Reflecting on his early development, he told me, “The best of the early drawings were simple ‘studies’ of the world around me plus many fantasies. These drawings were never considered to be a product of ‘Art.’ I didn’t consider making ‘Art’ until 1974.”

Coming of age in the early 1970s, Guevara was shaped by the emergence of the Chicano art movement, particularly the mural culture of East Los Angeles. As a teenager at Belmont High School, he witnessed the rise of public art tied to community activism, including murals associated with United Farm Workers and the work of early East L.A. muralists such as David Botello and Ignacio Gomez. In a recent interview, Guevara recalled becoming “obsessed with the Chicano illustrative motif which included Indigenous design and history, vato loco/street iconography and the great Mexican muralists.” This visual language, rooted in Chicano cultural identity and public expression, remained central to his artistic outlook.

In 1975, Guevara enrolled at California State University, Northridge (CSUN) majoring in Ethnic Studies during a formative period for Chicano Studies programs. Guevara contributed artwork and cartoons to El Popo, the Chicano student newspaper, while also pursuing music. Under the guidance of Professor Beto Ruiz—who lent Guevara his first accordion—Guevara developed as an accomplished acordeonista, performing with Los Angeles bands for over a decade. During this period, painting remained secondary, though Guevara continued to produce drawings and canvases and remained closely connected to the evolving Chicano art scene.

Guevara’s trajectory reflects the historical currents of the 1970s, a decade that witnessed the rise of Chicano cultural expression alongside major social and political transformations in the United States. From student walkouts and farmworker victories to the institutionalization of Chicano Studies, this era shaped a generation of artists who saw their communities and histories newly affirmed in visual form.

Despite his deep engagement with Chicano visual culture, Guevara encountered limited access to galleries and markets in Los Angeles. His first big art breakthrough came in a 1990 group exhibition at B-1 Galleries in Santa Monica—alongside artists like Frank Romero, Wayne Alaniz, and Paul Botello. Guevara’s inclusion in the exhibit, however, yielded little commercial success.

Facing these financial constraints, and drawn by both affordability and a vibrant Mexican American cultural environment, Guevara relocated to San Antonio in 1992. There, he balanced a dual career in music and visual art, refining his accordion performances within the city’s competitive conjunto scene and continuing his painting.

San Antonio proved crucial in sustaining Guevara’s career. The city’s lower cost of living enabled him to support himself as an artist while local support networks—including collectors and public initiatives like a San Antonio 1999 Percent for Art commission—provided visibility and validation. His work, he reminded me recently, has entered important local collections, including those supported by us [Harriett and Ricardo Romo], donations to St. Philip’s College and the San Antonio Public Library, and of course, the Cheech Museum in Riverside, California.

In San Antonio, Guevara developed the body of work for which he is best known, his “Urban Landscapes” series. Working primarily from life rather than photographs, he depicts modest homes, aging infrastructure, and overlooked streetscapes in both Los Angeles and San Antonio. His subjects, historical and weathered buildings and everyday residences, reflect a deliberate focus on environments often excluded from aesthetic celebration. As he noted of such structures, they “weren’t necessarily pretty,” yet they carried meaning and quiet visual power. His approach aligns with a broader philosophy that values authenticity over stylization, extending as well to portraiture projects based on direct observation.

Through his depictions of San Antonio’s historic neighborhoods, abandoned train yards, modest homes, and landmarks like the original Liberty Bar—Guevara contributes to a form of cultural preservation parallel to the efforts of local architects committed to historical conservation.

Guevara’s painting of the Cameo Theatre, located on East Commerce Street, is part of San Antonio’s Eastside story of racial segregation. I am especially fond of his painting of “Porfirio Diaz,” the ex-Mexican President’s home in the South Flores community. I noted to Guevara that the house actually belonged at one time to ex-Mexican President Venustiano Carranza, who had family in San Antonio and may have kept a second home in San Antonio.

While I am familiar with Guevara’s painting of the old “Raspa” store on South Flores, I did not initially recognize the meaning of his painting “Project Marvel.” I learned in talking with him that the painting depicting the tearing down of a building dealt with the destruction of the UT San Antonio Institute of Texan Cultures building to allow construction of a new Spurs Arena. Guevara loves historical structures, and his paintings of the “Devine Mill” and the “Rainbow Theatre” in Castroville, Texas, are beautifully executed.

Across decades of painting and music, Guevara has maintained a consistent commitment to discipline, humility, and community. Every artwork undertaken since he began painting has been completed in Plein Air, none from photographs.

Guevara’s love of humble structures is deeply integrated into his daily life. From his restored 1895 home in San Antonio’s Dignowity Hill neighborhood, he produces paintings on canvas and hand-built wood panels, maintaining a studio environment which also houses his handmade puppets of Mexican American accordion and guitar players. His home studio reflects his rationale of painting as lived experience rather than commodity. This setting, shared with his partner Jane Garza, underscores the fusion of domestic space, creative labor, and cultural continuity.

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Copyright 2026 by Ricardo Romo. All art and photo credits as indicated above.