Sachi Yanari-Rizzo, Curator of Prints & Drawings
Born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Malaquias Montoya and his siblings were raised in the San Joaquin Valley in California by their mother, who worked as a farm laborer. Lucia Saiz-Montoya shared her creative spirit and instilled in her family a sense of empathy for others, a central tenet in Montoya’s artistic practice. Money was tight, so Lucia learned to make her own plaster from gypsum and source natural pigments to bring color into their home. Inner tubes and tires were made into stencils and block prints on the walls.
Montoya’s early talents were in both art and football. After he served in the military in the late 1950s, Montoya attended Reedley Junior College, where he took art classes. He dropped out after a series of dispiriting encounters with faculty who made him question his abilities in English and football.
In San Jose, Montoya worked for Pranger’s Commercial Art and Advertising, where he gained his first experience in screenprinting and graphic design. In a desire to offer his employee more advertising projects, the owner convinced Montoya to take classes at San Jose City College, where he found a mentor in Joseph Zirker. Zirker encouraged Montoya to draw from his personal experiences and recognize his rich cultural heritage in Mexico, particularly in the paintings of Diego Rivera, Davíd Alfaro Siquerios, and José Clemente Orozco.
Montoya returned for another year of college in 1965 which coincided with the beginning of the United Farm Workers strike that focused on the demand for improved living and working conditions of laborers. Activism grew to reform across education and civil rights. The Chicano/a movement of the 1960s and 1970s embraced the plight of the farm workers, landgrant owners in New Mexico, urban workers in the Midwest and Southwest, and the blossoming student movement.
The Chicano/a movement called upon artists to create political works which became the primary means of visual communication for information and mobilization. This took the form of street murals and posters. Montoya’s involvement with the school’s Mexican American Student Confederation marked his first-time mixing politics with art. In retrospect, Montoya described, “A Chicano means an attitude, it means that I am seriously involved in trying to bring about change to our community, not just to our community but to all people who find themselves in the margins of society.”i
Through the G.I. Bill, Montoya studied at University of California, Berkeley, under abstract figurative painter Elmer Bischoff. When he arrived in the Bay area, the campus was a hotbed of social activism, including numerous historic strikes and sit-ins. His screenprinting experience was immediately put to use. At times Montoya was encouraged to leave protests and avoid arrest to ensure his ability to continue designing and printing posters and flyers for different causes.
Montoya learned that his art had the power to instill cultural pride and call for social change. He recalled about this time: “You are now becoming awake. . .You’re [now] discovering yourself and you’re using your art to speak about those conditions that you want to change. And all of a sudden, a voice that was much more articulate than my speaking voice had a vocabulary.”ii
Montoya co-founded the Mexican American Liberation Art Front. Inspired by Mexico’s Taller de Gráfica Popular, Montoya and Manuel Hernandez established three printmaking workshops located within the Oakland community in 1969. Montoya and Hernandez’s facilities were dedicated to screenprinting, and offered classes to college students and the community. Before Montoya even graduated from the university in 1969 he was asked to teach screenprinting, and he became a professor in the renamed Chicano Studies department.
Montoya’s screenprint de Vallegrande a Hollywood features the recognizable face of Ernesto “Che” Guevara de la Serna, an Argentinian-born guerrilla rebel leader and powerful symbol of revolution. Che wears his trademark starred beret and looks out with an intense stare. Montoya used the bold, graphic language of a poster.
After Che’s capture and execution by the Bolivian army, his body was brought to Vallegrande where it was laid in state for the public. Numerous photojournalists took postmortem portraits of his lifeless body, most memorably one taken by Freddy Alborta. Montoya’s print is a nod to pop artist Andy Warhol’s use of repeated photo-based images. He prints from Alborta’s photograph of Che three times, recalling Warhol’s multiple Marilyn’s and other Hollywood stars. The format is also reminiscent of a photographer’s contact sheet.
Although he incorporates his commentary on the left, Montoya keeps the font size small to not overpower the composition. It reads: “The more culture and business become intertwined, the less culture can play an emancipatory and critical role.” Montoya’s portrayal of Che is shown at eye level and as a deeply focused man. It differs from Alberto Korda’s famous photograph of the revolutionary (left) taken in 1960. This photograph conveys a mythic heroicism, as the shot is taken from below, forcing the viewer to look up to Che. This romanticized Che has become ubiquitous, found emblazoned on all types of commercial products like T-shirts and posters, speaking to the commodification of the cultural icon.
Como Flores que Brotan en Tiempos Duros is from the portfolio El Corazón: In Loving Memory of Sam Z. Coronado 1946-2013, in honor of the beloved master printer, publisher, and arts advocate. De Vallegrande a Hollywood was printed at Coronado’s printmaking studio in Austin for the Serie Print Project, an artist-in-residence program.
In this intimately sized print, Montoya’s title offers the consoling message: like flowers that sprout in hard times. His loose drawing style feels more immediate and personal than the slick, simple forms in de Vallegrande a Hollywood. Although pensive in appearance, the mood is elevated by the young woman’s brilliantly patterned shawl and hat. The prickly pear cactus’ fruit are appropriately heart shaped.
Montoya continues to offer his art as a voice for the voiceless. He considers himself a world citizen and creates images of empowerment, solidarity, and community. His works have advocated for human rights internationally and criticized the criminal justice system.
Montoya is Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Davis and previously taught at the California College of Arts and Crafts, Mills College, University of California, Berkeley, and at various community colleges throughout the San Francisco Bay area.
i “Malaquías Montoya—In His Own Words, latinopia.com, 6 March 2010.
ii Terezita Romo, Malaquias Montoya (Los Angeles: UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center Press, 2011), 40.