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 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 over 60-year career as an artist, Frank Romero has been a dedicated member of the Los Angeles arts community. As a member of the 1970s 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. 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. 

The artist has been featured and reviewed in publications such as The New York Times, LA Times, and Hyperallergic. His work is featured in many permanent collections, including the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; Museum of Modern Art Library, New York, NY; The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Los Angeles, CA; National Museum of Art, Washington D.C.; The Carnegie Art Museum, Oxnard, CA; Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, San Diego, CA; Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, TX; Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, CA, and the McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, TX.

Romero has exhibited extensively in the United States, Europe, and Japan, with his work being included in notable exhibitions such as Our America: The Latino Presence in American Art, organized by the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C; Chicano Art: Resistance and Affirmation, 1965-1985, organized by the Wight Art Gallery, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA and CARA National Advisory Committee, and Hispanic Art in the United States: Thirty Contemporary Painters and Sculptors, organized by the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Houston, TX, and the Corcoran Gallery, Washington, DC.