>>5556928 (/pb)

>Do we know the artist who drew those denver airport murals?

Looks like a radical socialist Chicano that wants reparations. Leo Tanguma participated in the Chicano movement which is the Mexican version of the Black Power movement.

Black Panthers = Chicano

There's those Communists again. Seems like 9 out of 10 digs wind up with a communist connect usually in Chicago or Clowns.

http://www.zingmagazine.com/drupal/node/2039

Can you walk me through some of the imagery of your murals? Who are the people in the background?

Many of them are real people. This is an anonymous community and an anonymous community can be anybody. In this here, there are the symbols of oppression that our [Chicano] community has overcome. Are you familiar with that figure?

points to a stylized figure with three faces on drafting work for his mural, “The Torch of Quetzalcoatl,” commissioned by the Denver Art Museum

No.

Well it means the fusion of the Spanish and the English when the Spanish came and brought women and began to rape and marry the indigenous women and introduced a new breed called, mestizo. And so that’s the essence of our identity.

And this figure, this is La Llorona, the weeping woman who destroyed her own children after having married a Spaniard, a conquistador. The Spaniard at one point decides to go back to Spain and to take the children with him. Well, that drives the woman mad because to them Spain was like Mars to us or someplace really distant and remote. The legend says that she drowned her children so that the husband wouldn’t take them to Spain, away from the New World. In my mural, I make La Llorona find her children because we get these stories from the Spanish historians and they had a very prejudicial view of the native peoples, that they were less than human, and we get a lot of our folklore from the Spanish males. In my mural she is shown reuniting with her children and it is a very happy occasion

Social Justice Warrior

Artist Statement

​

From poor rural areas to urban barrios, public schools, prisons, universities, museums and many other places, I have tried to paint relevant and meaningful murals for the community.

My upbringing by farm-worker parents with their values and religious beliefs, as well as my later participation in the Chicano Movement, inspired me to paint murals for more than forty years. Studying under African-American professor and muralist Dr. John Biggers at Texas Southern University in Houston increased my understanding of and ability to paint murals. I was also fortunate to meet the Mexican mural master David Alfaro Siqueiros, who inspired me to paint about social issues in the U.S.

In 1973, I developed a concept for sculptural free-standing murals, which can be transported and exhibited in many places. This has proven to be very effective in conveying mural messages, as their very shapes and structural configurations excite and inspire mural spectators. I involve youth and community members in planning, constructing, priming and texturizing the mural panels. The unusual shapes stimulate greater interest in participants to internalize the mural theme and its meaning and share this with others.

A key element found in my work is the struggle for human liberation and democracy. This refers to dehumanizing conditions oppressed people strive to overcome, such as poverty and homelessness in our cities, the destruction of the environment, racism and exploitation, or any other unjust conditions.

These issues, in my opinion, should be addressed by artists.

-Leo Tanguma

https://www.leotangumachicanomuralist.com/

>>5557713

>>5557713

Probably. And the stuff in and around the airport symbolize whats underneath.

>>5557700

on the Chicano movement:

http://ahorasecreto.blogspot.com/2011/07/mexican-allies-of-black-panther-party.html

I felt inspired to write this piece because of the many conflicts and polarization between black Americans and Mexican Americans. I cite ignorance in both communities, especially among the youth. There was a time when we knew better. As a black American, I will always remember and honor the Mexican-American Brown Berets as much as I remember and honor the Black Panther Party.

The Brown Berets was a group of Mexican-American revolutionaries from the barrios of the Southwest that emerged during the Chicano movement of the 1960s. The Chicano movement, or El Movimiento, was an extension of the Mexican-American Civil Rights Movement of the 1940s. Like the Black Panther Party, the Brown Berets were involved in community projects in their struggle for self-determination and social justice.

In 1966, as part of the Annual Chicano Student Conference in Los Angeles County, a group of high school students discussed different issues affecting Mexican-American communities, and subsequently formed the Young Citizens for Community Action, and later named Young Chicanos for Community Action (YCCA). The YCCA decided to wear brown berets to symbolize a united struggle with the Black Panthers against police harassment, inadequate public schools, poor job opportunities, inadequate political representation, and the Vietnam war. Their newspaper was La Causa (the Cause).

The Brown Berets became a national organization having opened chapters in California, Arizona, Texas, Colorado, New Mexico, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illiniois, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, Oregon, and Indiana.

Like the Black Panthers, they also organized free medical clinics and breakfast programs. They also came to be known for their direct action against police brutality, protesting murders and abuse by law enforcement agencies. They supported César Chávez and the United Farm Workers movement, the Land Grant Movement in New Mexico, and even participated in the first Rainbow Coalition involving the Black Panther Party, Young Patriots (white anti-racist organization), and the Young Lords (Puerto Rican allies of the Black Panther Party), and were involved in the Poor

Peoples Campaign in Washington DC.

As the story goes with the Black Panthers, the Brown Berets, the Young Lords, and the Young Patriots were weakened, diffused, and eventually disbanded through police and FBI infiltration.

>>5557745

Thanks anon. Should've highlighted this GEM from his interview.

>He made his first mural on a chalkboard in fifth grade, depicting children lynching the town’s corrupt sheriff, for which he was severely punished, and this experience stoked a rebellious verve in his artistic practice that would be played out during the coming decades

>>5557700

Still chillin with his Brown Beret Homies

https://www.chron.com/entertainment/arts-theater/article/The-Rebirth-of-an-East-Houston-landmark-12976605.php#photo-15686019

Tanguma looked happy but also a little stunned at being called a hero in a community where he had once felt so isolated he saw no other path than to escape. The county’s good stewardship had brought the biggest work of his life full circle.

“I’m not used to this kind of accolades,” he said.

A uniformed group from the Houston chapter of the pro-Chicano organization the Brown Berets looked like figures from the mural come to life as they waved a flag and posed for photographs. Their activism now focuses on educating the community about the city’s Chapter 42 ordinance to slow gentrification in the barrios, said member Willie Rodriguez.