A COLORFUL REBIRTH
Artist recreates 1970s Houston mural about Mexican-Americans
HOUSTON—The face of the little boy didn’t look right to Leo Tanguma. Not childlike enough.
The Houston Chronicle reports he added some skin to make the forehead larger. He extended the lips, so they protruded a little more— “more Chicano,” he said, gestures he’s learned through trial and error during many decades as a painter.
Another artist, the urban street painter Gonzo 247, stood beside Tanguma, admiring, watching, learning—and working slightly faster as he added muscle definition to the arm of a female figure next to the boy.
Under their small paintbrushes, “The Rebirth of Our Nationality” extended about 120 feet in either direction at 5900 Canal. Tanguma first painted the monster wall, one the largest canvases of the Chicano art movement, in the early 1970s, with the help of students from Texas Southern University and community volunteers, climbing 18 feet high on rickety ladders and scaffolds.
“I don’t know how we did it,” he said, admiring the ease of working on Gonzo’s scissor lift. “This thing is big!”
Harris County, the building’s current owner, commissioned Gonzo to recreate the badly faded and peeling mural last year, with Tanguma as a consultant. Now in his 70s, Tanguma left the city as a young widower not long after the mural was finished, frustrated by racism and a lack of support for his art. He thought he’d never return.
Gonzo has known Tanguma’s masterpiece all his life, from slightly afar: He grew up in the neighborhood, driving by what was then the Continental Can Co. on the way to church and his grandmother’s house. After tagging during his teenage years, he put his spray paints to better use to become one of Houston’s most entrepreneurial and popular artists with his company, Aerosol Warfare.
Still, eyebrows tilted when Harris County awarded Gonzo the $70,000 commission to recreate Tanguma’s mural. Figurative art like Tanguma’s is not his forte.
“I’ve always heard you need to step out of your comfort zone to grow. This is a major challenge, in a good way,” Gonzo said. “We took it back to the traditional roles of the master and the apprentice. Even today, he’s showing me how he’s doing things. Just learning from watching him has been an amazing experience.”
Gonzo (whose real name is Martin Figueroa Jr.) has done most of the heavy lifting, with help from just a few assistants during the past nine months. Tanguma, who now lives in Denver, is visiting through Monday for the second time, to tweak details. While the mural is far from complete, “Rebirth” definitely looks alive again, wildly colorful.
It depicts a rowdy procession bent against an invisible wind toward a central, Adam and Eve-like couple who stand within a huge rose blossom that sits upon a field of skulls. With 70 distinct characters, the mural portrays an epic narrative Tanguma devised to illustrate the story of Mexican-Americans during the 20th century. Among them are farm workers, laborers, union activists, soldiers, prisoners and, most important to Tanguma, families.
In the vein of his mentor, John Biggers, Tanguma wanted MexicanAmericans to embrace their heritage, including its struggles and triumphs. But Tanguma, a moralist at heart, wasn’t subtle in his criticisms of the community, either. The figures of Justice and an Aztec warrior are being trampled. The women are the most tortured figures of all; one crawls with cut-off hands.
Gonzo is thrilled to have Tanguma’s actual handwork on the repainted mural, he said. “That really makes it official.”
During Tanguma’s first visit in November—his first since the ’70s— crowds gathered across the street to watch the two artists working together. Gonzo had just completed the outlines of the figures then, and was blocking in their brown skin color.
Jeanne Tanguma, Leo’s wife of the past 30 years, stood across the street speaking in Spanish with the neighbors, who were already taking ownership.
“It was very emotional, coming and seeing what Gonzo has done,” she said. “He has been such a good technician and an artist. He was so careful to depict what had been there. And the neighborhood is so proud. They feel it’s their mural.”
Yvonne Garcia, who grew up a few blocks away, has loved “The Rebirth of Our Nationality” all her life. “It’s one of these things that gets in your head,” she said. “The colors weren’t as bright as they are now, but it wasn’t decaying yet.”
Now the director of HooksEpstein Gallery in the Upper Kirby District, Garcia has an art history degree from the University of Houston and lives with her husband, Andrew Richardson, not too far away from the mural in the East End. They have been driving down Canal Street every few weeks during the repainting, watching the progress.
“A week ago, it was like, oh my god!” she said. “It’s beautiful. It gets me emotional.”
Gonzo is not rushing to finish the repainting, noting that it took Tanguma a year and a half to make. “My thing is, do you want it done now? Or do you want it done right?” he said, eyeing the gathering rain clouds over downtown. “We’re not racing to a deadline. This wall hasn’t come without its challenges, and a big part of it has been weather.”
Hurricane Harvey, which made landfall in South Texas last Aug. 25, arrived a few days after he completed the white primer. Then came winter’s long, hard freezes. He’s also had other jobs to complete— most recently painting in front of a live audience at the Offshore Technology Conference.
At the mural’s far east end, a famous poem by Tezozomoc that was one of Tanguma’s inspirations is also not yet recreated. The words are about preserving history through images for “those who are yet to be born, the Children of the Mexicans.”
Although Tanguma doesn’t plan to come back until the dedication, muralist Anat Ronan is also helping Gonzo periodically. (JOJO Villarreal helped with the first two-thirds of the project.) Once the details are done, “Rebirth” will receive a clear, UV-protective coating.
Paint technology is more durable now, with more pigment, than it was 45 years ago, Gonzo said. “If Leo had had these materials back in the ’70s, we probably wouldn’t be here right now.”
But then, Tanguma wouldn’t have come back to find a city that he now likes very much. A quieter, calmer man, he is thrilled to see the mural looking fresh and alive again.
“It’s like a dream come true,” he said.
Gonzo has learned to appreciate the big picture as much as Tanguma’s painting techniques.
“Every day we’re here, we get affirmation from people in the community,” he said. “It’s a very powerful thing.”