The University of California, Santa Barbara's Art, Design & Architecture Museum has opened a new exhibition featuring 31 Mexican prints from the extensive Garcia-Correa Collection, showcasing the rich cultural heritage of campesino communities through lithographs, etchings, and linocuts. The exhibition, which opened Saturday and runs through December 7, serves as a preview for a future comprehensive display of the collection donated by Gil Garcia and his wife, Marti Correa de Garcia.
Gil Garcia, a prominent community leader known for his work as an innovative architect and former Santa Barbara City Council member who was once named Man of the Year, has deep roots in the migrant farmworker community. As a young child living among Spanish-speaking migrant worker families in Goleta, Garcia thought he was living in Mexico. His father was a campesino who came to America after the Mexican Revolution, eventually settling near the Santa Barbara Airport to work in local lemon, avocado, and walnut groves.
"The campesinos are anonymous heroes – the lifeblood of our economy," Garcia said while sitting in his light-filled living room in Santa Barbara's Upper East neighborhood. The walls of his home are covered with framed paintings and prints, with many more lining the floor and propped against walls. Sculptures are scattered around the fireplace, and cultural items fill coffee tables and shelves, representing just a portion of the extensive collection he and his wife have acquired over many years.
Both Garcia and his wife are children of campesinos, and their collection focuses on works by Mexican artists that illustrate campesino values and culture, Mexican history and architecture, along with pieces that hold personal meaning. "Many of us sons and daughters of campesinos have achieved success here, once we overcame the cultural clashes," Garcia explained. "Marti and I were raised on core values of humility, honesty, teamwork, and commitment to family. We feel that we owe it to them to gather art that reflects campesino and Mexican culture."
The current exhibition, curated by Ana Briz, the museum's assistant director and curator of exhibitions, is designed around a wall painted in vivid "rosa Mexicano" (Mexican pink), a reference to renowned Mexican architect Luis Barragán, who was known for his use of vibrant, saturated colors. The color choice is particularly fitting since Garcia is also an architect, and the museum recently acquired Barragán's papers. Against this vibrant backdrop hang two lithographs by Emilio Amero highlighted with pink washes: "Muchacha peinándose el pelo" (Girl Combing Her Hair, 1950) and "Vendedor de flores" (Flower Merchant, 1958).
"We are having a Mexican mid-century modern moment here, spanning from the end of the Mexican Revolution through the 1980s," Briz explained. "It was a time when artists came together after a political upheaval to use art to talk about history and societal changes." The artists worked together in collectives, studied with mentors, and represented a generational shift in printmaking, she added.
Among the most influential groups featured was Taller de Gráfica Popular (TGP, People's Graphic Workshop), an artist-run printshop in Mexico City that began in 1937. TGP produced thousands of prints, posters, handbills, newspapers, and books that depicted the daily lives, work, and social realities of Mexicans at that time. "They understood how to utilize art to communicate an idea quickly," Briz said. "Printmaking has immediacy."
The exhibition features works by several prominent TGP members, including four pieces by Leopoldo Méndez, one of the collective's founders who was involved in anti-fascist and leftist politics of the day. His 1953 linocut "La carreta" (The Cart) displays the TGP initials in the lower left-hand corner. Also featured are works by Fanny Rabel, a muralist, painter, and printmaker who was born in Poland but immigrated to Mexico as a child. She later studied with Frida Kahlo, assisted muralist Diego Rivera, and apprenticed with David Alfaro Siqueiros.
Two of Rabel's works hang together in the exhibition: the cheerful linocut "El buen maíz" (The Good Corn, 1959) from her portfolio "Niños de México" (Children of Mexico) and the bleak "Hambre" (Hunger) from 1952. The exhibition also includes three works by Siqueiros, including "Bañista de Tehuantepec" (Tehuantepec Bather, 1931), which was inspired by imagery from Mexico's pre-Hispanic era.
A bolder shade of Mexican pink is prominent in Rufino Tamayo's "Affiche avant la lettre," a 1969 lithograph that Briz noted is not in the same style as the exhibit's other items. "It is part of a later, larger movement in contemporary art, when artists were thinking about people and history in a different way," she explained.
The Garcias credit Rafael Perea de la Cabada for helping guide their collecting journey. They met the artist when he moved his studio to the garage of their previous home on Arrellaga Street. "He was there for years and paid us in art," Correa de Garcia said. "He became our curator. We wanted pieces representative of the culture, and he knew what we liked."
Looking toward the future, Garcia noted that while some of the collection will remain in the family, most will go to UCSB. "This fits with the campesino values of being in service to the community and helping others," he said. The museum is also currently displaying two additional exhibitions from its permanent collection: "Joan Mitchell 100," featuring the artist's 1970 "Sunflower" painting in commemoration of her centennial birthday, and "Beyond the Object," which displays more than 20 recent acquisitions and gifts representing the museum's expansion of its modern and contemporary art collection.
Visitors can view the exhibitions free of charge, though on-campus parking costs $8. A special reception celebrating the Garcia-Correa collection is scheduled for 5:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. on Saturday, September 27 at the museum, featuring performances by Mariachi Las Olas de Santa Barbara.
