Chicano Art

チカーノ・アート / 1965– / Style / Printmaking and Social Movements

An expression born out of the Mexican American civil rights movement. Murals, silkscreened posters, lowriders and lettering form one continuous vocabulary, and Aztec imagery, Catholic devotional figures and mixed English-Spanish lettering share a single surface. A case in which a movement produced a style.

Chicano Art — Murals at Chicano Park, San Diego — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0 · © Leirbag00
Murals at Chicano Park, San Diego — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0 · CC BY-SA 4.0 · © Leirbag00
Chicano Art — Zapata mural at Chicano Park — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0 · © Rpotance
Zapata mural at Chicano Park — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0 · CC BY-SA 4.0 · © Rpotance
Chicano Art — Chicano Moratorium march, 29 August 1970 — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 2.0 · © Kyle
Chicano Moratorium march, 29 August 1970 — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 2.0 · CC BY 2.0 · © Kyle

At a glance

Visual cues

  • The narrative composition of the mural
  • Aztec and Catholic imagery placed side by side
  • Bilingual lettering
  • The strong flat colour of silkscreen

Best used for

  • Organising and campaign graphics that have to belong to the people they address and be producible by them
  • Bilingual identity and signage in which code-switching is designed rather than reduced to a translated second line

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Dictionary entry

Type
Hand drawn brush script or blackletter for headings, English and Spanish at the same size
Composition
The sacred figure at the centre, with people and labour running around it as a band
Material
Four screens at most, outlines on a black plate, printed cheap for paper or wall
Caution
Lifting the lettering and the saints as decoration: the imagery belongs to a specific movement and community, and taken away from that it reads as costume.
Further study
The posters of the United Farm Workers / The activity of Asco / Its connection to lowrider culture

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https://indexstyle.org/styles/chicano-art
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[Chicano Art — IndexStyle](https://indexstyle.org/styles/chicano-art)
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