Menu of the FUTURE
Raul
GUERRERO
Raul GUERREO—born 1945, Brawley, CA—creates paintings, sculptures, prints, drawings, artist’s books, photographs, and videotapes. He has forged an expansive, ever-evolving body of work that combines technical innovation, critiques of sym- bolic power, historical and literary references, and his personal perspective as an American of Mexican ancestry.
From the mid–50s to 1960s, weekly family visits to Tijuana introduced him to a variety of Mexican folk arts and crafts as well as popular tourist items. Exposure to Zapotec textiles, indigenous hand-painted pottery, blown glass from the interior of Mexico, and plaster of Paris replicas of da Vinci’s Last Supper all provided an introduction to a visual and sensual world beyond the working class environment of post-war San Diego and its limited artistic and cultural offerings. At the same time, an incredible array of pop and sub-cultures were evolving in Southern California, particularly in Los Angeles: hot rod car-culture, pachucos, surfers, the beat generation, folk music, motorcycle gangs, and immigrants from Latin America and the Pacific Rim. The changing zeitgeist would influence Guerrero’s artistic work for years to come. Guerrero trained at the Chouinard Art Institute (BFA 1970).
Guerrero has exhibited nationally and internationally in numerous solo and group shows at venues such as the Long Beach Museum of Art (1978), Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (1998), and the CUE Art Foundation, New York (2010). He received an NEA Photography Fellowship in 1979, and was the first recipient of the San Diego Art Prize in 2006. He currently teaches in the Visual Art Department at the University of California, San Diego.
From the mid–50s to 1960s, weekly family visits to Tijuana introduced him to a variety of Mexican folk arts and crafts as well as popular tourist items. Exposure to Zapotec textiles, indigenous hand-painted pottery, blown glass from the interior of Mexico, and plaster of Paris replicas of da Vinci’s Last Supper all provided an introduction to a visual and sensual world beyond the working class environment of post-war San Diego and its limited artistic and cultural offerings. At the same time, an incredible array of pop and sub-cultures were evolving in Southern California, particularly in Los Angeles: hot rod car-culture, pachucos, surfers, the beat generation, folk music, motorcycle gangs, and immigrants from Latin America and the Pacific Rim. The changing zeitgeist would influence Guerrero’s artistic work for years to come. Guerrero trained at the Chouinard Art Institute (BFA 1970).
Guerrero has exhibited nationally and internationally in numerous solo and group shows at venues such as the Long Beach Museum of Art (1978), Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (1998), and the CUE Art Foundation, New York (2010). He received an NEA Photography Fellowship in 1979, and was the first recipient of the San Diego Art Prize in 2006. He currently teaches in the Visual Art Department at the University of California, San Diego.