Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

This document is a partial transcript of a conversation between Chicano scholars Amalia Mesa-Bains and Tomás Ybarra-Frausto that took place at the Mexican Museum in San Francisco, California, in October 1999, in which they discuss broad developments [...]

In this document, Tomás Ybarra-Frausto provides a brief overview of the conditions and events that precipitated the development of Chicano art, beginning with the origins of the Chicano political movement of the 1960s. He suggests that El Movimiento [...]

This document by Tomás Ybarra-Frausto is concerned with the practice of altar-making as a spiritual and cultural endeavor that blends influences from European, African, and indigenous American sources. Typically characterized as a kind of “folk [...]

In this interview of art historian Tomás Ybarra-Frausto by professor Michael Dear, the latter asks a series of questions related to Ybarra-Frausto’s impressions and experiences of the Chicano cultural project since its development in the 1960s as [...]

This document by Tomás Ybarra-Frausto details the founding of La Galería de la Raza in San Francisco Mission District in July 1970. Conceived as a space for the development and promotion of Chicana/o visual artists, the Galería also functioned as [...]

Written by art historian Tomás Ybarra-Frausto, this document represents a chronology of important social and cultural developments in Chicano art. Beginning in 1959 with an exhibition organized around the MAPA (Mexican American Political Association [...]

In this document Shifra Goldman and Tomás Ybarra-Frausto outline an extensive model for the study of a social history of Chicano art, beginning with a consideration of the cultural theories of Ernesto Galarza and anthropologists Americo Paredes and [...]

In this document Tomás Ybarra-Frausto discusses the philosophical and sociological underpinnings of Chicano art. He links its development to the political goals of the Chicano movement, describing the work of Chicano artists as a model for freedom [...]

In this essay, Tomás Ybarra-Frausto traces the origins and paths of the Chicano Movement and the Chicano Art Movement from their inception in the 1960s through the 1990s. Both movements sought political self-determination. The Chicano Art Movement [...]

Tomás Ybarra-Frausto situates Santa Barraza’s work as part of a cultural reclamation project that accompanied the Chicano movement. According to Ybarra-Frausto, Barraza developed a visual vocabulary that explored mestizo identity in the Texas/ [...]

Mexican-American scholar Tomás Ybarra-Frausto defines the Mexican concept of rasquache [crummy] for both Chicano and non-Mexican readers and presents it (with some humor) for the conceptualization of a Chicano artistic sensibility. Defined as the [...]

This essay by Tomás Ybarra-Frausto is included in the 1981 catalogue of selected works from the Mexican Museum in San Francisco, California. Ybarra-Frausto presents a historiography documenting the trajectory of Mexican American artistic traditions [...]

This essay by Tomás Ybarra-Frausto was included in the catalogue of the 1987 exhibition, Grotto of the Virgins: Installation by Amalia Mesa-Bains, which was held at the INTAR Latin American Gallery in New York. Ybarra-Frausto discusses the [...]

In this text, Tomás Ybarra-Frausto offers a history of Chicano cultural production from the 1960s to the 1990s, including the visual arts, music, literature, theater, and the history of community-based cultural institutions. He describes the changes [...]

This article outlines the work of Texan Chicana artist Carmen Lomas Garza (b. 1948) from the 1970s through the late 1980s. It describes the subtle evolution in her work through her Monitos[Cartoons]series, which are stylized figures in social [...]

In this essay, Tomas Ybarra-Frausto focuses on the heart as an important symbol in Chicano art. Divided into two sections: “Themes and Variations” and “Maintenance and Extension of Traditions,” he argues that the “moral dimension” of [...]