John valadez artist chicano style

Much of the Garcia Collection is rooted in the Chicano movement of East Los Angeles in the late 1960s, which spawned groundbreaking activist art and a renewed pride in Hispanic culture and heritage. The collection includes several artists from the seminal art collectives of 1970s East L.A.: Los Four and Asco.

The Chicano movement used the concept of Aztlan (the pre-colonial ancestral home of the Mexican people encompassing the American Southwest) as a symbol of cultural pride and geographic sovereignty.

This movement/community has important historical ties to Claremont and the Pomona Valley throughout ancient and modern history. In addition to this region being located within Aztlan, in the twentieth century, the Mexican muralists Jose Clemente Orozco and Alfredo Ramos Martinez completed murals at the Claremont Colleges in the 1930s and 40s that have yielded global influence.

Jackson Pollack regarded Orozco’s Prometheus mural at Pomona College as one of the most imp