Death of Rubén Salazar

Frank Romero, Death of Rubén Salazar, 1986, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase made possible in part by the Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment, 1993.19, © 1986, Frank Romero

Romero memorializes Rubén Salazar, a Los Angeles Times journalist and key chronicler of the Chicano civil rights movement. After covering the Chicano Moratorium of 1970, an anti-Vietnam War demonstration, Salazar stopped at the Silver Dollar Café in East LA. Reports of an armed disturbance sent deputies to the scene. A tear-gas projectile shot into the bar killed Salazar instantly. Romero combined references to this tragic day with a vision of the future when Salazar is the subject of a film announced on a theater marquee. The work’s large scale and subject link it with a tradition of grand painting that commemorates events that shaped history.

Our America: The Latino Presence in American Art, 2013

Rubén Salazar was a writer for the Los Angeles Times and was active in the civil rights battles of the 1960s. When Chicanos rallied against the Vietnam War on August 29, 1970, the Los Angeles police fired tear-gas canisters into the Silver Dollar Bar, where Salazar was struck and killed. Romero painted Death of Rubén Salazar on the scale of Mexico’s revolutionary murals, but used the brilliant colors of the East L.A. barrio. To the right, a movie marquee announces that La Muerte de Rubén Salazar is now playing. At the left of the Silver Dollar, the Casa de Cambio suggests not only the exchange of paychecks and cash but also the idea of change in the community.

Officers, clouds of gas, buildings, and lowriders all share the bold brushwork and fiery color of graffiti, but this exuberance masks the emotional toll that painting the scene exacted. Romero acknowledges that it takes years to think through and to paint these episodes in the life of his community. He did not grow up thinking of himself as a Chicano, but embraced that identity after years of working with three other Latino artists in an informal group known as Los Four. The year he painted Death of Rubén Salazar, Romero said that “there’s all this talk about America not having a culture other than McDonald’s…I do have a culture. It’s Aztlan.” He was referring to the mythical birthplace of the Aztec people.

Exhibition Label, Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2006

Rubén Salazar was a writer for the Los Angeles Times and was active in the civil rights battles of the 1960s. When Chicanos rallied against the Vietnam War on August 29, 1970, police fired tear-gas canisters into the Silver Dollar Bar, where Salazar was struck and killed. To create Death of Rubén Salazar, Frank Romero combined the large scale of Mexican Revolution murals with the brilliant colors of the East LA barrio. To the right, a movie marquee announces that “La Muerte de Rubén Salazar” is now playing. At the left of the Silver Dollar, the Casa de Cambio suggests not only the exchange of paychecks and cash, but the idea of change in the community. Officers, clouds of gas, buildings, and lowriders all share the bold brushwork and fiery color of graffiti, but this exuberance masks the emotional toll that painting the scene exacted. The year he painted Death of Rubén Salazar, Romero said that “There’s all this talk about America not having a culture other than McDonald’s … I do have a culture. It’s Aztlan.” He was referring to the mythical birthplace of the Aztec people.

“In my studio I have to deal with my own devils, and I wrestle with my own concerns and dreams and fears.” Frank Romero, Oral History interview, 1997, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution

Title

Death of Rubén Salazar

Artist

Frank Romero

Date

1986

Location

Dimensions

72 ¹⁄₄ x 120 ³⁄₈ in. (183.5 x 305.8 cm.)

Copyright

Credit Line

Smithsonian American Art Museum

Museum purchase made possible in part by the Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment

Mediums

oil

Mediums Description

oil on canvas

Classifications

Painting

Keywords

Architecture – vehicle – automobile
Cityscape
State of being – death – murder
Architecture Exterior – commercial – tavern
Occupation – service – policeman

Object Number

1993.19

Palette

Linked Open Data

Linked Open Data URI

Videos

Date

December 4, 2012

Transcript
Information

FRANK ROMERO: People have told me that I use color very well. I love bright colors, and in fact I’m fascinated with acrylic paint because the colors are so brilliant. In my training, I was told that purple is the opposite of yellow and all of that stuff, but I don’t use that as a theory, I just react instinctively to the way I feel. It’s emotional.

The part of me that’s Mexican or Latino, I think of Mexicans like hot vibrant color. You see that in the way the houses are painted in Mexico and East LA. I grew up in East Los Angeles, and we always had problems and feared the sheriff’s department because their policy was to come down hard on minorities.

“The Death of Ruben Salazar” is one of my police brutality series. He was a newspaper reporter for the LA Times. He was reporting on a demonstration by Latinas against the Vietnam War in ‘70–‘71, and he, after work, they went out with some friends and had a beer at the local saloon, Silver Dollar, and the police got some disturbance call and shot a tear gas canister into the building and hit him in the head and killed him instantly. No one was ever prosecuted. No one was ever found guilty for anything they did. He became a martyr.

If you look at the paintings, they’re very beautiful. They’re in lovely pastel colors and so forth like that. So people are attracted to the image, with these, on an abstract level, and then they see what it’s about, then I hope somehow that they come away with the message.

With color, when one paints into a wet background it tints the colors you apply, and of course the skill is in trying to keep them pure. I’ll do a painting and, you have to excuse me, because I’m not supposed to say this, but I’ll do painting in 30 or 40 minutes and, I’m supposed say 65 years and 40 minutes. I think I stole that from Picasso. But I really enjoy painting in oils and lately even more so in acrylic, because the paint is drying so quickly that you really have to work very fast. Sometimes when you put this paint down the light catches it and it makes it glow. To me it’s a challenge to paint very quickly and assuredly with no mistakes. You just have to do it.

An interview with the artist Frank Romero. Frank Romero grew up in the Hispanic, Asian, and Jewish communities of East Los Angeles. He began painting when he was five years old and as a teenager attended LA's Otis Art Institute, one of the best art schools in the nation. Romero did not think of himself as a Chicano until he began to work with three other artists in an informal group known as Los Four. Los Four and other Hispanic artists throughout the West used wall murals, graffiti, and street theater to protest America's involvement in Vietnam and Southeast Asia. The police response to antiwar demonstrations in Los Angeles was part of a larger pattern of violence against the minority communities that Romero experienced throughout his life. It takes years for the artist to think through and to paint these episodes in the life of his community, because, he says, "That stuff is hard for me to do, it hurts, it's frightening" (Los Angeles Times, July 28, 2002 [online]). Romero's brightly colored paintings celebrate the Los Angeles culture of lowriders and "rascuache," the art of making something beautiful out of the ordinary.

Media Series

Meet the Artist Videos

Date

November 20, 2013

Information

This audio series discusses artworks and themes in the exhibition Our America: The Latino Presence in American Art at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. In this episode, Eduardo Díaz, director of the Smithsonian Latino Center, explores Frank Romero’s Death of Rubén Salazar

Date

November 20, 2013

Information

Esta serie de Podcast habla sobre los temas y las obras que hacen parte de la exhibición "Nuestra América: la presencia latina en el arte estadounidense". En este episodio Eduardo Díaz, director del Centro Latino Smithsonian, presenta "Death of Rubén Salazar" por Frank Romero.