E. Carmen Ramos

Claudia E. Zapata

Terezita Romo

Tatiana Reinoza

"In the 1960s, activist Chicano artists forged a remarkable history of printmaking that remains vital today. Many artists came of age during the civil rights, labor, anti-war, feminist and LGBTQ+ movements and channeled the period's social activism into assertive aesthetic statements that announced a new political and cultural consciousness among people of Mexican descent in the United States. ¡Printing the Revolution! explores the rise of Chicano graphics within these early social movements and the ways in which Chicanx artists since then have advanced innovative printmaking practices attuned to social justice. More than reflecting the need for social change, the works featured in the catalogue and exhibition project and revise notions of Chicanx identity, spur political activism, and school viewers in new understandings of U.S. and international history. By employing diverse visual and artistic modes from satire, to portraiture, to appropriation, conceptualism, and politicized pop, the artists in this exhibition build an enduring and inventive graphic tradition that has yet to be fully integrated into the history of U.S. printmaking. This exhibition is the first to unite historic civil rights-era prints alongside works by contemporary printmakers, including several that embrace expanded graphics that exist beyond the paper substrate. While the dominant mode of printmaking among Chicanx artists remains screenprinting, the installation features works in a wide range of techniques and presentation strategies, from installation art to public interventions, augmented reality, and shareable graphics that circulate in the digital realm. The exhibition is also the first to consider how Chicanx mentors, print centers, and networks nurtured other artists, including several who drew inspiration from the example of Chicanx printmaking. Featured artists and collectives include Rupert García, Malaquias Montoya, Ester Hernández, the Royal Chicano Air Force, David Avalos, Elizabeth Sisco, Louis Hock, Sandra Fernández, Juan de Dios Mora, the Dominican York Proyecto Grafíca, Enrique Chagoya, René Castro, Juan Fuentes, and Linda Lucero, among others. ¡Printing the Revolution! features more than 100 works drawn from the Smithsonian American Art Museum's pioneering collection of Latinx art. The Museum's Chicanx graphics holdings rose significantly with an important gift in 1995 from the renowned scholar Tomás Ybarra-Frausto. Since then, other major donations and an ambitious acquisition program have built one of the largest museum collections of Chicanx graphics on the East Coast"--

The Rise and Impact of Chicano Graphics, 1965 to Now

¡Printing the Revolution!

Virginia McCord Mecklenburg

Karen Lemmey

Joann Moser

Presents over eighty modernist artworks by some of the twentieth century's leading artists.

Modern Art from the Sam Rose and Julie Walters Collection

Crosscurrents

Smithsonian American Art Museum

""On the one hand, the affirmation that Latino art is American art is simply a fact. Latino artists are American by birth, citizenship, residence, education, experience, and even sacrifice-a factor made clear by the large number of Latino artists that have served in the United States armed forces. On the other hand, the statement poses a challenge to the ways in which we traditionally think about what constitutes American art."-E. Carmen RamosIs Latino art an integral part of modern American art? Presenting one hundred major artworks from the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Our America seeks to "recalibrate" enduring concepts about American national culture by exploring how one group of artists-those of Latin American descent and heritage-express their relationship to American art, history, and culture.Highlights include an installation altar by Amalia Mesa-Bains, the "recycled" films of Raphael Montaänez Ortiz, and a 1960 geometric painting by Carmen Herrera. Other notable artists include Olga Albizu, Melesio "Mel" Casas, Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons, Margarita Cabrera, Enrique Chagoya, Teresita Fernâandez, Ken Gonzales-Day, Luis Jimâenez, Ana Mendieta, Pepâon Osorio, Sophie Rivera, Freddy Rodri;guez, and John Valadez, among many others.Author and curator E. Carmen Ramos is the Smithsonian American Art Museum's curator of latino art. She has organized numerous shows, including the fifth biennial at El Museo del Barrio in New York City in 2007.Dr. Tomâas Ybarra-Frausto, the "grandfather" of this subject, and formerly associate director for creativity and culture at the Rockefeller Foundation in New York, has written and published extensively on US/latino cultural issues"--

The Latino Presence in American Art

Our America

E. Carmen Ramos

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