Mexican Women in the United States ; Struggles Past and Present

Politics & Social Sciences

Mora, Magdalena

Del Castillo, Adelaida

Social Sciences

Chicano Studies Research Center

Mexican Immigrant Workers in the United States

Business & Money

Gronk was born in 1954 in the barrios of East Los Angeles. An autodidact by circumstance, he began his career as an urban muralist who had to look up the word “mural” to know whether he could paint one. Over time, he has grown into an international figure who has created grand sets for operas and computerized animation for panoramic screens.
In this sweeping examination of Gronk’s oeuvre, Max Benavidez elucidates how the artist can cross genres, sexual categories, and ethnic barriers, yet still remain true to himself. From street murals to mail art, from large-scale action painting to performance art and operatic set design, Gronk has made a lasting mark on the Chicano art movement, the punk scene, gay art, and the cultural world stage. As a founder of the East L.A. avant-garde art collective Asco (Spanish for nausea), Gronk and his contemporaries responded to Hollywood’s rejection of Chicanos by creating a conceptual countercinema, the No Movie, that incorporated Hollywood imagery and style even as it wickedly dissected the banality and biases of the mass media. In collaborations with Cyclona, Mundo Meza, Jerry Dreva, and Tomata DuPlenty, Gronk challenged the limits of sexuality, gender norms, and taste. 
What Benavidez ultimately reveals is Gronk’s uncanny power to reinvent himself and his art, moving through one vivid artistic and subcultural scene to another. Add large doses of Gronk’s wit, irony, and talent and you have the story of his major contribution not only to Chicano art but to late twentieth-century culture. 
Max Benavidez is a writer, independent scholar, essayist for the Los Angeles Times, and a consultant to a wide range of cultural and academic institutions.

Gronk (A Ver)

Arts & Photography

Benavidez, Max

History & Criticism

Malaquias Montoya (A Ver)

Working for more than four decades in a variety of media, from drawings and paintings to murals and the silkscreen prints for which he is best known, Malaquias Montoya has pursued a singular artistic vision that promotes the dignity of labor, exposes assaults on human rights, and provokes resistance in the face of injustice. Montoya cofounded the influential Chicano artist collective known as the Mexican-American Liberation Art Front in 1968, inspiring a generation of artists and activists and continuing to do so today through his teaching and by widely exhibiting his overtly political and visually arresting works.

Romo, Terezita

One of the most revered members of “the Miami Generation,” a group of Cuban-born artists who emigrated to the United States, María Brito is a painter, sculptor, and installation artist best known for her elaborately constructed room-like works that embody narratives of loss and displacement. Brito also draws on personal iconography to create challenging works that are at once deeply autobiographical and reflect a profound fluency with the history of Western art. In this new volume in the landmark A Ver series and the first major book on Brito’s career, Juan A. Martinez examines the unique interplay of the personal and the universal in this Miami-based artist’s diverse mixed-media works.

María Brito (A Ver)

Mártinez, Juan A.

One of the most revered members of “the Miami Generation,” a group of Cuban-born artists who emigrated to the United States, María Brito is a painter, sculptor, and installation artist best known for her elaborately constructed room-like works that embody narratives of loss and displacement. Brito also draws on personal iconography to create challenging works that are at once deeply autobiographical and reflect a profound fluency with the history of Western art. In this new volume in the landmark A Ver series and the first major book on Brito’s career, Juan A. Martinez examines the unique interplay of the personal and the universal in this Miami-based artist’s diverse mixed-media works.

Maria Brito (A Ver: Revisioning Art History, Volume 4)

“It is important for us to be visually literate; it is a survival skill. The media is what passes for culture in contemporary U.S. culture, and it is extremely powerful. It is crucial that we systematically explore the cultural misdefinition of Mexicans and Latin Americans that is presented in the media.” —Yolanda López
Chicana artist Yolanda López achieved international recognition for her groundbreaking and controversial Virgin of Guadalupe series of paintings (1975–78) in which she transformed the beloved icon in order to celebrate and sanctify ordinary Mexican and Mexican American women as hardworking, assertive, and vibrant. Born in San Diego, California, López formally trained as a painter but has since expanded into a variety of media, including installation, video, and slide presentations.
Karen Mary Davalos identifies the themes and concerns that unify the artist’s diverse body of work. At times playful, political, and feminist, López is unwavering in her commitment to representing the experiences of Mexican American women in the United States, confronting stereotypes about Latin Americans and challenging U.S. immigration policy.
Karen Mary Davalos is associate professor of Chicano/a studies at Loyola Marymount University and the author of Exhibiting Mestizaje.

Yolanda Lopez (A Ver)

Davalos, Karen Mary

A conceptual and multimedia artist known for her writing, photography, painting, installation, and public art, Celia Alvarez Muñoz has been invited to exhibit and to create site-specific works for more than fifty major U.S. museums and was included in the 1991 Whitney Biennial. In her work Muñoz draws on family and communal memories to explore her own experiences growing up Catholic and Mexican American on the Texas-Mexico border, as well as larger issues concerning the spaces between languages and cultures and the histories that connect place to community.
With more than one hundred color photographs, this book in the landmark A Ver series surveys Muñoz's career from her earliest bookmaking project, the Enlightenment series, and such installation pieces as Stories Your Mother Never Told You to her more recent works of public art and digital photography. Throughout his in-depth essay, Roberto Tejada illuminates Muñoz's feminist perspective, political engagement, and provocative use of ideas and artifacts from two cultures.

Celia Alvarez Muñoz (A Ver)

Tejada, Roberto

Biographies & Memoirs

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