Biography - Esteban Villa

Born:	August 3, 1930
Education:	1982  M.F.A., California State University, Sacramento 1961  B.A. in Art Education, California College of Arts and Crafts, Oakland, CA
Professional Experience:	1995  Professor Emeritus 1969-1994  Professor, Art Dept., California State University, Sacramento 1983  Promoted to Full Professor 1968  Art Instructor, Tennyson High School, Hayward, CA 1967  Art Instructor, California Youth Authority, Stockton, CA 1961  Art Instructor, Linden High School, Linden, CA
Exhibitions: (1964-1995)	Numerous one-man and group art shows, lectures, murals, publications, donations of paintings, videos, posters, and musical  performances throughout California, the U.S., and other countries.
Exhibitions: (1990-1995)	"The Art of Esteban Villa", one-man survey, Galeria Posada "Pilots of Aztlan", PBS documentary of RCAF "Sabbatical Works of Villa", CSUS Library "Tierra Nueva c/s, Orosco, Villa, & the Foot" Sacramento "Americhicano Art", group show, Grover Beach "M.E.Cha.A. Statewide Conf., group show, Bakersfield "Poster Show", group, Galeria Posada "Mariachi Jazz", one-man show, Center for Contemporary Art "In search of Mr. Con Safos", RCAF Touring Show, Fresno "Los Californias", Four Artists, Bakersfield "Aqui estamos...", CSU, San Bernardino "Colores del Valle", CSU, Stanislaus, Turlock "In Lak'esh", 30 artists/30 poets, Sacramento "CARA", Nationally touring exhibit, L.A. "Chimextec", One-man show, Nevada Museum of Art, Reno, NV "Dia de los Muertos", Univ. of Calif., Davis "Oro de Aztlan", CSU, Sacramento "1000 Sketch Mural", Bakersfield "RCAF Poster Art Exhibit", Sacramento History Museum Folsom Prison, several slide and lecture programs Sacramento Center of Contemporary Art, group show "Cinco de Mayo", one-man shows, Vanir Construction, Hispanic Chamber  of Commerce, SMUD "Chicano Art: Resistance and Affirmation", Fresno "Indigenous Peoples: No Boundaries", S.F. "El Sabor", Galeria de la Raza, S.F. Suicide Intervention/Prevention 3-day mural workshop, Sacramento. Latino Cultural Awareness Days "Nuestra Historia", Franchise Tax Board "Impresiones de Chavez", Centro Bellas Artes, Fresno "Two Tryptichs", one-man show, Luna's Cafe, Sacramento "Una Maravilla", group show, Galeria Posada, Sacramento Faculty Drawing Exhibition, CSUS "Artistas Studio Tardeada", 4-artist studio tour, South Sacramento Invitation to a group exhibit by Mexican Museum
Exhibitions: (1998-2001)	“Just Another Poster? Chicano Graphic Arts in Calif.”, Univ. of Texas, Austin 8/00 & Santa Barbara, 1/01 “An Afternoon with Esteban Villa” (accompanied by guitarist Dana Fong), City College, Sacramento, 10/00 “Hispanic Culture Celebration”, lecture, Madelyn Nagazyna High, Youth Authority, Sacramento, 10/00 “Art Auction 2000”, KVIE, Sacramento, 5/00 “Reading California: Art, Image and Identity 1900-2000”, reproduction of Villa mural, ”Emergence of the Chicano Struggle”, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 7/00 “RCAF Art Show” by Ricardo Favela & Esteban Villa, Calif. State University, Stanislaus, 4/00 “Esteban Villa/ New Work” (Menudo Eaters of America), Luna’s Café, Sacramento, 2/00 “An Exhibition of Paintings by Esteban Villa”, California Arts Council, Sacramento, 12/99-2/00 “Navidad en el Valle”, group show, The Mexican Heritage Center, Stockton, 12/99-1/00 ”Horton Art Gallery”, opening of new gallery,art exhibit, Delta College, Stockton, 12/99 “Voces Ahora”, group show, The Art Foundry Gallery, Sacramento, 10-11/99 “International Chicano/Chicana Art Exhibition”, featured artist, Port of San Diego, 9-10/99 “Cinco de Mayo”, art presentation, William Land Elementary School, Sacramento, 5/99 “Cesar Chavez Scholarship”, donation of art to silent auction, Delta College, Stockton, 3/99 “Mexican Independence Day Cultural Presentation”, guest speaker, Franklin High, Stockton, 9/98

Biography

Esteban Villa, born August 3, 1930, in Tulare, California, is a nationally recognized artist and muralist.  A Professor Emeritus at California State University, his teaching career began in 1962 at the high school level and includes assignments at Washington State University, D.Q.U., Davis, and numerous lecture and slide presentations, art exhibits and mural projects at Universities mainly in California and surrounding states.  He has served as an art consultant to schools and organizations including Centro de Artistas Chicanos, and has done art programs in the Prison System.  He is a founding member of the Royal Chicano Air Force, a collective of artists, professors and students, which was formed amid the Chicano Movimiento's push for social and political rights.

Villa's work is frequently shown in Sacramento at the Crocker Museum, Galeria Posada, and Luna's Cafe.  He can also be found performing as a singer and guitarist.  In a recent article the Sacramento Bee spoke of Villa as "an extraordinary man: a mural artist, musician, teacher and community leader who is known for his barrio art, which played a role in the Chicano movement of the late 1960's and 70's.  The movement in many ways asserted the positive value of Mexican culture."

Some of Villa's most recognized works and exhibitions have included "La Super Chicana", "La Arte Cosmica de Esteban Villa", "Los Olvidados" (the homeless), "Menudo Eaters", "Portraits", and murals at Southside Park, The Underpass to Old Sac., Macy's Parking Lot (downtown Sac.).  Projects include  a 3-day workshop for the Mental Heath Dept. resulting in a 4'X 9' canvas tryptich painting titled, "Please Help" (about Suicide Intervention and Prevention), and a similar tryptich in tribute to the late Cesar Chavez shown in a Fresno group art exhibit.  Both of these tryptichs were seen at Luna's Cafe in October/November, 1993.  Villa  exhibited his 1993 Sabbatical series of acrylic paintings at the California State University, Sacramento, opening on August 8, 1994 and closing on October 2, 1994.

In addition, Villa has been involved in the production of the Channel 6 (PBS) documentary "Pilots of Aztlan", a film about the Royal Chicano Air Force, which he co-founded.  This film, in which he appears along with other RCAF members, was aired on Channel 6 in January, 1995.  He exhibited a major survey of his paintings and related works at the Galeria Posada in February through March, 1995, titled "The Art of Esteban Villa", and was in a group art show at Encina Art Gallery during Feb/March, 1995.

Villa was involved in the planning of a mural developed by schoolchildren, Freeport Elementary School and SMAC on the Freeport Elementary School site in the Spring of 1995.

He presently continues to paint and draw daily.  His work continues to show several times each year throughout California.

Artist Statement
4/27/92
"Born to Where I Am Now"
Humble Beginning

I was born in the year of the depression in Tulare, California, August 3, 1930. We were dirt poor. Both of my parents were born in Mexico. I have 7 brothers and sisters.

A lot has happened since then. Chicano art has taken root. Now its roots are spreading and its limbs reach upward as if to touch the sky. Could it be the birth of the Chicano Blues?

Chicano art is a duality: In Lak'Esh!  It can only work against itself. Like an atom, spelled backwards, spells ____?   Knowwhatimean?

Chicano art is omniscient. One size fits all.  Sabesloquedigo? Como un mural o un poster del RCAF. Te fijas lo que estoy diciendo?

Chicano art uses los colores primarios: red, yellow, blue, plus black, plus white! Period. Basic shapes:

Be sure to use all the elements. Don't forget there are only 5 (cinco).

Luego falta la mitologia. Native Norte Americano. That's who I am, a Norte Americano of Chicano culture. And so it is with my art. Basic color, basic shapes, basic instinct and basic training. Chicano art can never peak. The Mayans truncated their pyramids. I wonder why?

Chicano Arte uses dos (2) digits. Uno dos like in computer

El Valle de San Joaquin

I grew up in the San Joaquin Valley. It was the end of the depression and the beginning of a new epoch in Mexican American pop culture. There for a while it looked good. School, hot rods, and girls. It looked very good!

December 7, 1941. There is a declaration of war, World War II. I was too young for that war (11 years of age), so I used art to draw a poster size transport ship used by the U.S. Army to transport soldiers overseas. Being on welfare at that time (I grew up thinking that was normal), I had to improvise art supplies.

I looked for hard terronez (clods) to carve a fantasy image with my grape knife. The farmer's wooden raisin trays made a make-believe, inexpensive, stretched canvas, primed and ready to paint. Sections of local newspapers made newsprint paper. At that adolescent age I had never heard of charcoal, oils and acrylics. Acrylics came much later. At age 11, I had the ganas (desire) to be an artist, but who ever heard of painting workshops in the Bakersfield Visalia Tulare Valley farming communities? Along with G.E. requirements I always included an art course. When my first grade teacher introduced me to art it was love at first sight!

La Escuela In English

I learned English. I learned fast. I loved school. What would you choose? A labor camp/school? I chose school. I stayed with it until I dropped out of my first year of high school. It was an interruption of my education that lasted until I was discharged from the Army in 1953. With the G.I. Bill and a student loan I finished high school and graduated from college with a BA in Art Ed. and a teaching credential.

I have been teaching for 31 years. I want to retire and paint. I want to paint what I teach: Murals, Posters, Barrio Art, Chicano Art. I dedicate my life's work to children. Adults are welcome, too.

Institutional Commitment

Like I said before, I was born into the Welfare System and as a child I thought everybody lived the same way. I experienced hardship every day. Barrio life is brutal. Hot summers, cold winters, hunger, illness. I honestly suffered more in a labor camp than in the Army. Korea was like a vacation in comparison.

The Army was a good experience for me. I was able to step away from labor camps and realize that there was a better way to live. Army life served its purpose.

The University. Ah, the University. The University made everything happen. Everything came into sharp, crystal clear focus. I was 31 years old. A graduate of California College of Arts and Crafts, Oakland, California, 1961.

Survival

I started teaching the same year I graduated. I taught high school for 8 years: Art, English, Spanish, Journalism. In 1969, I began teaching Barrio Art at California State University, Sacramento.

I was part of the 60's culture movement. I felt lucky to have witnessed it with my own eyes: psychedelics, existential surrealism, the beginning of a unique art movement. Chicano Art. I shudder to think what life would be like without this exciting art movement. It was like our flying fortress crashing in the ocean and everyone on board swimming safely to an island. A cultural oasis.

La Familia

I was discharged from the Army in 1953. I was single and I had the G.I. Bill. I had the desire to complete my education, high school and then college. I also wanted a family and had this fantasy to teach art to my gente. I always remember that every familia Mexicana had at least one child that was good in art. I thought if I could just harness the energy of these children I could begin an art movement without parallel. It happened in 1968. I joined M.A.L.A.F., the Mexican American Liberation Art Front, known throughout as La mala F. It was an art movement about to happen. In 1969 I was assigned to teach Chicano art at CSUS.  We changed the name to the Rebel Chicano Art Front. The acronym RCAF was confused with the Royal Canadian Air Force. We said no! We are the Royal Chicano Air Force. We have been flying high ever since and continue to gain attitude every day.

What is Chicano Art?

We are asked by art historians what is Chicano Art? We want to know. People want to know. The C.I.A. wants to know. Everyone feels there has to be a definition before it is accepted into the history books. The definition of Chicano Art is TOP SECRET. I can let you know this. No one can agree on its definition, but you will know it when you see it.

Cultural Surrealism

Ever hear of a flying Jalapeno? Flying Burrito Brothers? Ever hear of tortilla art? Do you know anything about religious icons? La virgin de Guadalupe? Ever hear of El Dia de los Muertos? Ever try hot salsa? Have you ever been to a boda in the barrio? Ever hear of menudo? Don't try it. Don't try it unless you read the ingredients. The list goes on.

Chicano artists do Chicano art. Call it fine art if you like. The Chicano artist brings this iconography to your attention. If we don't do it, no one else will.

Cultural Individual Identity

To be individual you must be yourself. Everyone knows this country is a continent. In school we were taught that the name of this continent is called America. Everyone who lives here is American. Can we say then that there are no borders to this demographic fact? Cultural diversity? Yes.

Chicano Art

Chicano Art is a reality. It is also the x factor as in algebra. Without the 0 we can't have math. Without Chicano Art we can't have cultural diversity.