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Title: MALDEF Mural Exhibition - Benefit View count: 134 Rating: 0 (0 ratings) Description: http://www.artnet.com/Galleries/Exhibitions.asp?gid=423938699&cid=169483 Benefitting MALDEF - Mexican American Legal Defense & Educational Fund August 13 - September 30, 2009 Opening Reception: Thursday, August 13, 5:00 - 8:00 pm Since 1968 MALDEF has been an outstanding advocate for Hispanic Americans. Through its legal activism, and its political and educational programs, Latino communities across America have been lifted up by its defense of personal freedom. Grace Lane Gallery is proud to assist this highly important non-profit agency in achieving its financial goals. [All mural sales revenue goes to MALDEF, less commissions and artists' re-sale fees]. Latino mural art is a tradition with roots in the revolutionary broadsides and democratic murals of pre-revolutionary Mexico. The provocative paintings of Los Tres Grandes - Orozco, Rivera and Siqueiros - from the Presidential Palace in Mexico City, to the towers of Rockefeller Center, provided the template for subsequent painters in the genre. Los Angeles mural painting also developed from the graffitists and taggers who have deployed their art as markers of identity and territorial interest. Latino and Chicano muralists have raised the profile of this public art by embracing not only their comunidad, but also by elevating the style so as to be inclusive of broad social and historical imagery and issues. It is an art born and matured in the public eye. The three key murals in the exhibition, Gateway To Manifest Destiny, Mural Of Muralists, and Top Hat Bridal Shop Mural, are evidence of this weaving together of the public and private strands of Latin and US history. They eventually became part of the renowned collection of Ramiro Salcedo, a partner in Victor Clothing Company in downtown Los Angeles where some of the artists had studios in the building and traded their work for space and services. After the store closed many works were sold, including one of the largest, The Broadway Mural (10 panels, 60-feet in length), which was acquired in 2001 by the Peter Norton Foundation . Mural of Muralists, by Eloy Torrez,combines portraits of several of Los Angeles' best-known muralists in a mid-freeway setting. Kent Twitchell, Betye Saar & Carlos Almaraz attend the artist as he paints symbolic figures on the roadbed of a mysteriously quiet underpass. In The Top Hat Bridal Shop Mural, a timeless frieze of weddings in East LA, John Valadez invites us in as family to see his hugely expanded five-panel "snapshot" of local Angeleno history. Gateway To Manifest Destiny, by the mural collective East Los Streetscapers (Wayne Healy, David Botello and George Yepes) was painted in St. Louis beneath the Gateway Arch. Designed as a great map with territories bearing Chicano names, the mythical and real figures of western culture such as Huck Finn and a now-liberated Jim, Sacajawea, and the Pony Express rider, spread a mixed and dynamic American culture toward the Pacific shore. From Mark Twain's Mississippi River to the suburban sprawl of western California, these murals lay out the archetypes and the history of our great American drama. Please join us for the "widescreen" experience of these rediscovered heroic paintings. Tags: maldef, mexican, american, legal, defense, educational, fund, murals, mural, artist, latino, Author: maldef |
