Lucila Villaseñor Grijalva is a Chicana visual artist who was born in Los Angeles, California. She is most known for her work as a muralist and her involvement in the Mechicano Art Center, which was one of the first Chicanx art collectives in Los Angeles. Though she primarily painted murals, Grijalva also designed posters for the Mechicano Art Center using silkscreen. Her art is inspired by the graffiti culture of gangs in the surrounding area.
Early Life and Education
She was born in Los Angeles, California and was raised in a Mexican Catholic household. As she grew up in the Maravilla area, a predominately Chicano neighborhood, she maintained a strong connection to her Mexican heritage. She attended Catholic schools for the duration of her K-12 education, including Sacred Heart Highschool in Lincoln Heights. She graduated from high school in 1953 then immediately entered a year-long art apprenticeship with Fred Giglioli, an Italian American artist. She then attended East Los Angeles College and graduated with an associate degree in 1961. Afterwards, she attended the Otis Art Institute, where she met Carlos Almaraz, a well-known Chicano artist during the early Chicano movement. She then transferred to Cal State Fullerton, where she briefly studied sculpting and earned a bachelor's degree.
Art & Activism in Public Organizations
Her artwork was inspired by gang-affiliated characteristics found in urban graffiti art, especially the inclusion of placas, which are initials or slogans that signify one’s individual identity or association with a certain gang. She took specific interest in learning about the artistic graffiti culture of Little Valley, an East Los Angeles gang. She asked permission to attend their meetings to gain insight and authenticate her inclusion of distinct graffiti elements in her murals. She painted a mural for Little Valley and also completed a mural on one of the first walls in the Mechicano Art Center, which were both inspired by her appreciation of placas. Her affinity for this creative element stems from its ability to honor Chicanx people’s desire to be immortalized after experiences of exclusion. Her work with this style has been compared to that of Willie Herrón and Chaz Bojorquez, who are both well-known Chicano muralists that popularized “cholo-style” graffiti art. Her artistic activism has been greatly associated with her work at the Mechicano Art Center, specifically its Highland Park location, where she displayed her own solo exhibition in 1976. During this time, she collaborated with many popular Chicana artists, including Isabel M. Castro, Sonya Fe, Judithe Hernández, and Susan Saenz. Notably, her visual art sought to educate and connect her community, which she achieved through encouraging creative expression to discourage gang violence and fortify positive self-identity. She also created art for L.A. Xicano, a group of five exhibitions that highlighted the work and impact of Los Angeles visual artists of Mexican-descent. Specifically, Grijalva showed her work at the exhibition entitled Mapping Another L.A.:The Chicano Art Movement, which focused on the urban networks between Chicanx identity, traditional Mexican themes, and modern American style.
References
“Curatorial Strategies on the Art Scene During the Feminist Movement: Los Angeles in the 1970s.” Curating Differently : Feminisms, Exhibitions and Curatorial Spaces, edited by Jessica Sjöholm Skrubbe, Cambridge Scholars Publisher, 2016. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucla/detail.action?docID=4535042.
“Oral History Interview with Lucila ‘Lucille’ Villaseñor Grijalva”, interview by Denise Lugo, August 8, 2018, transcript, John Spoor Broome Library Institutional Repository, http://hdl.handle.net/10139/5464.
Ribera D’Ebre, Rodrigo. “An Urban History: The Influence of Street Gangs in Contemporary Art.” Los Angeles Review of Books, 14 December 2015, http://lareviewofbooks.org/article/an-urban-history-the-influence-of-street-gangs-on-contemporary-art/. Accessed 11 October 2021.
Davalos, Karen Mary. “LOOKING AT THE ARCHIVE: Mechicano Art Center and Goez Art Studios and Gallery.” Chicana/o Remix: Art and Errata Since the Sixties, NYU Press, 2017, pp. 63–96, http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1gk090z.8.
Noriega, Chon A., Terecita Romo, and Pilar Tompkins Rivas. L.A. Xicano . Los Angeles: UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center Press, 2011. Print.
https://planning.lacity.org/StaffRpt/InitialRpts/reports/CHC-2020-5211.pdf
Further reading
Hernandez, Robert. “Mapping Another L.A.: The Chicano Movement”, Museum and Curatorial Studies Review, Vol. 1, No. 1, 2013
Roberts, Lauren. “‘Mapping Another L.A.’ Traces City’s Chicano Art Movement,” The Daily Bruin, 17 October 2011.
Zetterman, Eva. “Claims by Anglo American feminists and Chicanas/os for alternative space: The LA art scene in the political 1970s” American Studies in Scandinavia, 48:1 (2016), pp. 61-83.
Fajardo-Hill, Cecilia. “The Invisibility of Latin American Women Artist: Problematizing Art Historical and Curatorial Practices,” Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1960–1985 Digital Archive Hammer Museum, pp. 21-27, https://hammer.ucla.edu/radical-women/essays/the-invisibility-of-latin-american-women-artists. Accessed 22 October 2021.
External links
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