Emigdio Vasquez

American, 1939 - 2014

BiographyA pioneer in the Chicano art movement, was born in the historic mining town of Jerome, Arizona. His family moved to Orange, California when he was two years old. Painter and muralist, Vasquez holds BA and MA degrees from California State University Fullerton and AA degree from Santa Ana College.

Newspaper articles, television programs and radio interviews have featured Emigdio and his socially enlightened work for the last 30 years. Emigdio has exhibited in numerous museums and private galleries. The Bowers Museum of Cultural Art engaged Vasquez as Artist-in-residence from 1985 to 1988 and he conducted public art & painting classes. Commissions from collectors, municipalities and the state-funded California Arts Council have brought the paintings and murals of Emigdio before a wide audience. Award-winning artist, educator and community art organizer, Emigdio Vasquez documents and memorializes the struggle for survival and dignity of the working class: The experience of being marginal, caught between cultures as well as borders. Vasquez fuses the elements of social and super realism into warmly colored compositions, conveying a powerful sense of the social struggle present within the urban Chicano experience of 20th century America.

Source:
https://www.library.ucsb.edu/special-collections/cema/vasquez_brochure

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