No Compre Vino Gallo, 1974 (Restored 1990)
No Compre Vino Gallo, 1990
In Herron's Storage (Portable Mural)Restoration of a Carlos Almaraz Mural
ARTIST: Willie Herron III grew up in East Los Angeles, and has been long active in the Chicano art movement. He rose to prominence in the early 1970s with the “blood and guts and fists” style he uses to portray the barrio where he was raised and began drawing and painting. He had the ability to cope in a community where he sometimes had to “dodge bullets between brushstrokes”.
“I began painting murals in Los Angeles with a conscious attempt at representing contemporary issues that confront the people of those communities in which my murals are located” –Willie F. Herron
SUBJECT: For the 1990-91 Neighborhood Pride Program, as a tribute to Carlos Almaraz and to the historic struggle of the United Farm workers’ Union, Herron recreated No Compren Vino Gallo, one of the most artistically significant Chicano murals. The artist includes elements of Siqueiros’s mural imagery, and portrays the UFW boycott of Gallo wine; a company that uses grapes picked by workers who suffered horrible working conditions. The mural commemorates the UFW’s struggle for social justice and against dehumanizing agribusiness and corporate greed. The mural was exhibited at the Latino Lab at the former Los Angeles Theater Center (LATC) in 1991 until it was moved because the LATC closure.©SPAR