Mel Casas, “San Antonio Circus ‘69.” Courtesy of Patricia Ruiz-Healy.
Mel Casas, a native of El Paso, moved to San Antonio in 1961 to teach art at San Antonio College. Over the next fifty years, until his death in 2014, Casas established himself as one of the nation’s preeminent Chicano artists. His celebrated “Humanscapes” series, which spans 150 works produced between 1965 and 1989 and an additional 600 paintings, is remarkable in its complexities, wit, and incisive cultural examination. He was also a prominent educator and key figure in the Chicano art movement as a founding member of the artist collective Con Safo, advocating for visibility and empowerment for Chicano artists during the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Nancy L. Kelker book cover.
Casas was born during the start of the Great Depression in 1929 in Segundo Barrio, blocks away from the Rio Grande and the city’s poorest neighborhood. He began drawing as a young teen and attended El Paso High School, a predominantly Anglo school known for its excellent academic programs. It was at his high school that he first experienced discrimination based on his skin color and Spanish accent.
Mel Casas, “Humans” [Humanscape Series]. Photo by Ricardo Romo.
Following his graduation, he worked for the Pacific Fruit Express, a railroad company, as an iceman. In 1950, at the age of 21, he was drafted by the U.S. Army and fought in the Korean War. He was wounded in battle and was awarded a Purple Heart for bravery. He returned to El Paso and used his G.I. War Benefits to enroll at Texas Western [now known as UT El Paso]. Next, Casas went to graduate school in Mexico, and he received an MFA from the University of the Americas in Mexico City in 1958.Casas returned to El Paso after graduate school in Mexico City and found a job teaching art at Bowie High School. One of his prized students was Gaspar Enriquez, now a prominent Latino artist who also grew up in Segundo Barrio and attended UT El Paso. Enriquez went on to teach art at Bowie High School for 33 years. He now lives and paints in San Elizario, Texas, a historic town just southeast of El Paso. Casas taught high school for a short period, leaving El Paso for a college teaching post in San Antonio in 1961.
Mel Casas, “Brownies of the Southwest.” [Humanscape #62]. Photo by Ricardo Romo.
In the early 1960s, while teaching art classes at San Antonio College, Casas focused largely on abstract expressionism. In 1965, however, he began his Humanscape series, a shift that Smithsonian Curator for Latino Art E. Carmen Ramos “coincided with his interest in the psychology and popular media culture, especially film.” The Humanscape paintings were large (roughly 6 x 8 feet).
Mel Casas, “Texas Fantasy” and “Texano.” Photo by Ricardo Romo.
Ramos noted that initially, the series “explored how the media shapes our standards of beauty and sexual desires.” In many of Casas’ paintings, Ramos notes, the white female figure is prevalent, or what he calls the “Barbie Doll Ideal.” Art critics, including Ramos, observed that Casas was interested in elevating race as a dominant component in American popular culture.
Casas is one of the pioneering artists credited with the early creation and subsequent evolution of Chicano art. While producing his own work and teaching in the early 1970s, he was also a founding member of the art collective Con Safos. During this time, several Chicano artists from South Texas and San Antonio began reflecting on how their art differed from the styles they had studied in college. The group also recognized the need to name what they were creating, as it represented a new form of American art. They chose to call it Chicano Art.
In “Brownies of the Southwest,” Casas’s best-known painting, he found an ideal formula to make a statement reflecting this emerging Chicano art movement. Carlos Jackson, art history professor, described the painting in a Patricia Ruiz-Healy catalogue as addressing “Chicanos’ relations to U.S. culture (eating brownies and participating in the Girl Scouts), Chicano political identity (becoming a Brown Beret), and Chicano historical identity (acknowledging Mexican and indigenous roots). Additionally, the painting relates Chicano art to the wave of U.S. pop art.”The Smithsonian American Art Museum [SAAM] purchased Casas’s 1970“Brownies of the Southwest” [Humanscape 62] in 2012. The curators described the work as a satire related to the “trivialization of Mexican and Indigenous cultures in American mass media and advertising.” The visual images, all set on a large canvas, depict a movie or TV screen. The iconography is a reference, according to SAAM, to “brownness” and Mesoamerican heritage.”
Mel Casas, “Kitchen Spanish.” [Humanscape Series]. Photo by Ricardo Romo.
But Casas also wanted to address the issue of stereotyping Latinos by the media. He was quietly involved in the campaign to eradicate the Frito Bandito TV ad, which, according to SAAM curators, was “the sombrero-totting stereotypical mascot for Frito-Lay corn chips.” Casas created “Brownies of the Southwest” amidst this debate “to both document the Frito Bandito’s existence and embody the public outrage around it.” Ultimately, community efforts were successful. In 1971, Frito-Lay retired the Frito Bandito.At the time he created “Brownies of the Southwest”, Casas was deeply immersed in his Humanscape series. The large central image in each Humanscape painting—which Casas numbered consecutively—suggests a TV or movie screen populated with everyday life imagery. This shift, according to SAAM curator Ramos, “coincided with his interest in psychology and popular media culture, especially film.” It should be noted that only a small number of his Humanscape paintings dealt with Chicano topics. Initially, the series explored how the media shapes our standards of beauty and sexual desires. [SAAM] The prevalence of the white female figure, or what Casas called the “Barbie Doll Ideal,” indicates how he was already honing in on a race as a dominant element in American popular culture.
Mel Casas, Left. [Humanscape Series]. From a donation by Harriett and Ricardo Romo to the McNay Museum of Art. Photo by Ricardo Romo.
Casas’s “Kitchen Spanish” is perhaps one of the better-known pieces from the Humanscape series. Over the past fifty years, a steady flow of workers from Mexico has come to labor on American farms, in industries, and in homes. Household workers are prevalent in Texas, and Casas did not miss the opportunity to make a social comment about their employment.In most cases, household workers clean homes, care for children, and cook for employers who do not speak Spanish. The language barrier is often an issue, as most recent immigrants are not fluent in English. Thus, employers attempt to learn a few words in Spanish to communicate what needs to be done. What makes “Kitchen Spanish” unusual—and perhaps reveals Casas’s unique brand of satire—is the way the Spanish words are expressed by the housekeeper. Is the housekeeper teaching the family Spanish? It seems so, but she must essentially say “Sí” (yes) to everyone: the children, the women who hired her, and even the dog and cat. She seems responsible for serving everyone.“Kitchen Spanish” reminds us that Texas, like many other states, relies heavily on Mexican workers, many of whom are undocumented. These workers undertake the unpleasant and dirty chores that homeowners would rather avoid. This is a timeless theme about labor and those who perform it, one that resonates even more strongly today, given ongoing debates about immigration and the current construction of a border wall. Casas’s. Overall, his work enhances our understanding of Latino culture and the pressing political issues of our time.____________________________________________________________________
Copyright 2025 by Ricardo Romo. Photo credits as indicated.
