Title
Los Santos de San Antonio
Creator
Date
Type
Graphic Arts
Format
Contributor
Annotation
This limited offset print is a landscape of a shop window containing small religious statues accompanied by the reflection of San Antonio’s cityscape. The dark reflection clearly contrasts with the brightness of the statues and the reflection of the glass. The composition of the statues that line the bottom of the piece are anchored by the statue of Jesus Christ with open arms and the reflection of the back of a street sign. The colors at the bottom portion of the image are complimentary of pale oranges, blues, and whites in order to seemingly establish the clarity of Chicanx culture and contrast it with the hazy, oncoming, dark capitalistic city.
The image evokes the cultural clash that is San Antonio’s American capitalist attitude and the spirituality and humbleness of Chicana, Chicano, and Chicanx life. The composition and colors of the piece build a sense of confusion, collision, and disorientation. There is an uncertainty: can two different worlds live together or will one possibly absorb the other, with a positive or negative result? Either way, it is ironic to place the Christ statue in the middle of the portrait. As the Prince of Peace, he welcomes all with open arms, including the underlying problematic environment of capitalism and cultural domination in the city. Learning to live between two contrasting places can, indeed, be disorienting, but it is also the accurate representation of what it is like to be Chicanx—being in nepantla, riding between two worlds and learning to coexist with both sides of the border culture. The artwork highlights the contrasting existence of two cultures and what it feels like to live in the borderlands.
To understand this work, one must investigate the past and the artist’s goals. Jesse Trevino was born in Monterrey, Mexico in 1946, moved to San Antonio at four years old, and, as an adult, went to New York where he studied art and painting. While studying, he was drafted to serve in the Vietnam War and went through a near death experience, injuring his right leg and right arm. After surviving, he suffered paralysis in his right arm, which was eventually amputated, and he learned to paint with his left hand at San Antonio College. Given his challenges, he started with the goal of painting whatever he wanted from the barrio. He developed his photorealistic style and created murals across San Antonio. Carrying his goal of portraying what he knew, he consistently created images that contained items that were synonymous with Chicanx culture, such as the Virgin of Guadalupe. Trevino was ultimately able to create art that was important to him in an appearance that he hoped everyone could understand and respect. (Author: Abigail Rivera)
The image evokes the cultural clash that is San Antonio’s American capitalist attitude and the spirituality and humbleness of Chicana, Chicano, and Chicanx life. The composition and colors of the piece build a sense of confusion, collision, and disorientation. There is an uncertainty: can two different worlds live together or will one possibly absorb the other, with a positive or negative result? Either way, it is ironic to place the Christ statue in the middle of the portrait. As the Prince of Peace, he welcomes all with open arms, including the underlying problematic environment of capitalism and cultural domination in the city. Learning to live between two contrasting places can, indeed, be disorienting, but it is also the accurate representation of what it is like to be Chicanx—being in nepantla, riding between two worlds and learning to coexist with both sides of the border culture. The artwork highlights the contrasting existence of two cultures and what it feels like to live in the borderlands.
To understand this work, one must investigate the past and the artist’s goals. Jesse Trevino was born in Monterrey, Mexico in 1946, moved to San Antonio at four years old, and, as an adult, went to New York where he studied art and painting. While studying, he was drafted to serve in the Vietnam War and went through a near death experience, injuring his right leg and right arm. After surviving, he suffered paralysis in his right arm, which was eventually amputated, and he learned to paint with his left hand at San Antonio College. Given his challenges, he started with the goal of painting whatever he wanted from the barrio. He developed his photorealistic style and created murals across San Antonio. Carrying his goal of portraying what he knew, he consistently created images that contained items that were synonymous with Chicanx culture, such as the Virgin of Guadalupe. Trevino was ultimately able to create art that was important to him in an appearance that he hoped everyone could understand and respect. (Author: Abigail Rivera)
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