ALFREDO SANTOS’ SAN QUENTIN MURALS
Sunday, August 19th, 2007 | Permalink
The Sunday Times ran a great story on 80-year-old Mexican-American painter Alfredo Santos, and the beginning of his career as an artist:
[He] was 24 when he arrived at San Quentin in 1951 in the back of an ambulance. “I had a bum leg from an infection,” Mr. Santos, 80, said by telephone from San Diego, where he now lives on Social Security. “They put me in the convalescent wing, and the prison doc told me, ‘Keep quiet, kid, and I’ll let you stay here.’”
Mr. Santos, who had taken high school art classes until he was expelled from 10th grade for striking a teacher, remained in convalescent cells his entire prison stay. At first he read books voraciously, he said, and drew portraits of other inmates and, from photographs, their families. “I got paid a lot of cigarettes,” he recalled, referring to the standard currency behind bars. “But I also got to really focus on art. San Quentin is where I became an artist.”
In 1953, two years after he was locked up, Mr. Santos submitted the winning sketch in a competition among the inmates to paint a mural on one side of a dining hall partition. After inexplicably being denied the use of other colors, he began to apply thinned, raw sienna oil paint directly to plaster. Before long the warden ordered Mr. Santos to paint all three double-sided walls in the dining area.
You can see a multimedia feature on the mural. The article goes on about Santos’ life after San Quentin.
After his parole in 1955, Mr. Santos worked at Disneyland as a caricaturist and then opened a studio and gallery in San Diego, his hometown. But after pleading guilty to possession of marijuana, he fled to Mexico, where he owned a succession of galleries in Guadalajara, Mexico City and Acapulco. Returning to the United States in 1967, he painted, made sculptures of carved wood and found objects and ran a popular gallery and bohemian gathering spot in the Catskills village of Fleischmanns, N.Y. (An exhibition of his work is on display there through Aug. 31 at the Art et cetera gallery.) More than 20 years ago, after a divorce and a heart attack, he moved back to San Diego.
Though his San Quentin murals are among the most significant works of Mr. Santos’s career, for years even close friends knew nothing of them. “I never bragged about the murals because I was too embarrassed to tell people I’d been to prison as a young man,” he said.
For me, going to prison is high up on the list of the worst things that could possibly happen to you — but for an artist going to prison, you can’t get much luckier than this. As William Gibson says in another section this week, “Loss is not without its curious advantages for the artist. Major traumatic breaks are pretty common in the biographies of artists I respect. Not that I’d wish that on anyone.”
I’m suddenly reminded of my depression over the fact that we missed the Steinberg mural that’s part of the in-progress Cincinnati show.
I want to study more about the history of murals and mural-painting: anybody got any recommendations? (Especially stuff to see in Austin?)
August 19th, 2007 at 12:55 pm
There are some good murals around. Quick examples:
–On the side of the Intellectual Property bookstore (used to be Tower Records, but back in the day it was the “Varsity” theater) at the corner of 24th and Guadalupe.
–Along the walls of the open-air market at Guadalupe and 23rd (well, the equivalent of 23rd, since it doesn’t go through to Guadalupe).
–South 1st Street, maybe where it crosses Mary St. (If it’s not that intersection, it’s right around there.) There a great jumbo-sized “AUSTIN” postcard painted on the side of a sign-painter’s shop.
August 19th, 2007 at 8:20 pm
oh i forgot about the one on the side of IP…the other ones I haven’t seen
August 19th, 2007 at 9:56 pm
Austin,
Are you familiar with the work of the Salon painters of 19th century France? You arrived in Austin just a little too late to catch the show that was at the Blanton Museum. These are the painters that were the successful mainstream when Impressionism began to develop.
The level of the technique is beyond belief. Do a Google search on William Bouguereau, or Jean Gerome if you are unfamiliar.
I and my wife were both Clarion students of Maureen McHugh.
August 20th, 2007 at 7:11 am
Hey Stuart! Thanks for the tip. I’m definitely going to check those painters out. Glad to hear you were students of Maureen…she is super-fantastic
August 21st, 2007 at 5:09 am
Don’t forget about the locals…………….Pickaway County that is! Google Eric Henn, a Logan Elm graduate and check out all that he has done!
August 21st, 2007 at 7:05 am
thanks mom…i totally forgot about that
August 21st, 2007 at 12:47 pm
For starters you should look into the early-20th Century artists Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros if you want to get into the history of murals. They formed the cornerstone of the politically-charged social realist movement that started (?) in Mexico and eventually merged with other art forms in the 30s and 40s. Neat stuff. The Blanton Museum here in town has a significant collection of Latin American art from that period, too. Not necessarily mural-related, but thought I’d mention it…
Also check out the Wall of Respect in the South Side of Chicago, it’s an important American mural.
On a local note, I’ll put in a plug for my friend and former professor, John Yancey. He painted a number of murals in Chicago, and has done a couple of mosaic murals here in Austin (http://www.utexas.edu/features/archive/2004/mural.html). He’s a great guy, and would be interesting to talk to if you want to know more about the community aspect of murals.
Somewhat more commercial, a lot of the highly-visible murals and fiberglass sculptures here in town were painted by Rory Skagen (http://www.roryskagen.com/) of Blue Genie Art Industries (http://www.bluegenieart.com/) and/or his former art partner Billy Brakhage. It almost seems like they did all of the 1990s-era Austin murals!
August 21st, 2007 at 5:42 pm
Adam — I’m gonna start calling you the wizard.
August 22nd, 2007 at 12:39 am
I want to second the recco for Skagen and Brakhage. Their mural of Cesar Chavez at 600 West Annie is on a wall opposite a building on South Lamar where they used to have a studio and live (hand to mouth, from what I heard). They were a prolific duo.
Esther’s Pool at 525 E. Sixth (Esther’s Follies) is also not to be missed.
In case you don’t know about it, there’s a listing of mural in Austin at Murals Around Town
August 22nd, 2007 at 7:55 am
Perfect!