Frank Romero USA, b. 1941

A pioneer of the Chicana/o art movement, Frank Romero (b. 1941, Los Angeles) is counted among the earliest and most influential of its participants. Romero’s visual explorations of Chicanidad are cornerstones of this period in art history that arose from El Movimiento, the social and political civil rights movement that began in the early 1970s. Pulling together a diverse cast of signs and symbols to invent a visual language reflective of the multiculturalism that is at the core of the community, Romero drew from both his immediate surroundings of Los Angeles as well as iconographies related to the American Southwest, from where Romero traces part of his ancestry. Romero uses various mediums, such as paintings, murals, neon, and sculptures, to explore narratives within the Chicano experience, Latin American heritage, and American pop culture, providing insight into his experiences as an artist and a Mexican American in East LA.

Throughout his 40-year career as an artist, Frank Romero has been a dedicated member of the Los Angeles arts community. As a member of the 1970’s Chicano art collective, Los Four, Romero and fellow artists Carlos Almaraz, Beto de la Rocha, and Gilbert Lujan helped define and promote Mexican American new awareness through murals, publications, and exhibitions. Los Four's historic 1974 exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) was the country's first show of Chicano art at a major art institution. This was a landmark for the community, seeing that being Chicano was a revisionist idea. “In those days, we were ‘Mexican American.’ White people often would call me ‘Spanish.’ If you were more liberal, you were Mexican American. The whole idea of being Chicano was very radical,” says Romero. Growing up in the multicultural Boyle Heights at the peak of multiple political movements, Romero witnessed over-policing in his neighborhood, sparking him to, down the line, create reflective pieces that highlighted the political unrest and struggle for equality. 

Since then, Romero has successfully balanced a career in public and private arenas. He has completed over 15 murals throughout Los Angeles. He was a key contributor to the 1984 Olympic Arts Festival with Going to the Olympics, a large-scale mural painted in one of Los Angeles’ busiest freeways (Highway 101). Romero now spends six months out of the year at his home in Le Vermont, France, where he still paints every day. 

Romero has exhibited extensively in the United States, Europe, and Japan. His work is featured in many permanent collections, including the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.; National Museum of Art in Washington D.C.; The Carnegie Art Museum, Oxnard, CA; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; Contemporary Art San Diego, San Diego, CA; The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Los Angeles, CA; Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, TX; and the McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, TX.