Judithe Hernández, Reina de la Primavera, from Méchicano 1977 Calendario, 1976, screenprint on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum
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This audio podcast 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, artist Judithe Hernandez discusses her work Reina de la Primavera.
One of the groups out of that area of Los Angeles was an artist collective known as Los Four. There were actually five of us. The four men got together first, and then I was added. I think I was the only member who was actually elected; the other guys just sort of formed the group, but it was an amazing time for me, especially as a woman. There were not very many women artists who were actively working as artists. To be associated you know with these very talented, mostly male counterparts is a very interesting situation to be in, but one of the things that the Chicano did was to produce a calendar that was I think a really brilliant combination of artists and images that finally came out for that year. The month I did was May, and it’s interesting enough you know back in the day that that particular face and style was something that I was doing. I was just out of Otis Art Institute. I got my MFA there in ’74, and ultimately the same image can be seen in a mural that I did at the Ramona Gardens Housing Project in East Los Angeles – the same central figure has that face, and surprisingly enough over 40 years later, that mural is still intact and in that neighborhood.
It was just a very exciting time. It was a highly charged political atmosphere kind of like you know what it is now for you to young people in their 20s – the Occupy movement and the Green movement. It was a time when you couldn’t avoid being politically involved, and so a lot of the art from that period, those four posters in particular that are here at the show, reflect the preoccupation that we had at the time. It actually was more than preoccupation it was our way of being involved with forwarding and supporting the political agenda of the Chicano civil rights movement.
As artists there really wasn’t much else we could do. What we did best was art, and so we did posters, we painted murals, we worked for Cesar Chavez, we did art for him. It was a time that produced a tremendous combination of images and techniques that were the beginning, I think, of Chicano art. At least it’s interesting now at my age to read back now in history books, they’re beginning to write about this, that suddenly you find out that you were you were part of the beginning of an American School of Art, so it seems so appropriate, and I’m so happy to to have been alive to see you know that recognition of this very exciting school of art and artists who worked in the ‘70s, and who continue to produce work. I’m still an active artist and still doing a lot of work, and it’s finally taking its rightful place in this amazing museum and historically and what is known as American art.