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Title: "El Encuentro," 1983
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ABOUT

During the tumultuous early 1970s, Judithe Hernández first won acclaim as a member of the celebrated Chicano artist collective Los Four. The collective would become a major force in the Chicano Art Movement and the first Chicano artists to break through the mainstream museum barrier. After graduating from Otis Art Institute in 1974, she and Carlos Almaraz, also a Los Four member, earned recognition as muralists during the Los Angeles mural renaissance of the 1970's. Together they painted murals for labor rights leader Cesar Chavez, as well as community murals, such as the Ramona Gardens Housing Projects in East Los Angeles where they painted a pair of the first feminist empowerment murals.

 

While at Otis, her mentor was the legendary African American artist, Charles White. His influence and encouragement to pursue her interest in social realism art was critical to her later work. Like White, she shared a love of drawing which resulted in a studio practice dedicated to works on paper. Following graduation from Otis, her inclusion in museum and gallery exhibitions in California began immediately with landmark exhibitions at the Oakland Museum, "In Search of Aztlan" and "The Aesthetics of Graffiti" at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. By 1983 her career moved to the national level with a solo exhibition at the venerable Cayman Gallery in New York making her the first Chicana to extend her artistic reach beyond the West coast. The international significance of her work came in 1989 with the first exhibition of Chicano art in Europe, "Les Démon des Anges." Hernández was one of sixteen artists (one of three women) who’s work was part of this ground-breaking exhibition. Her studio practice has been devoted to the lush pastel paintings for which she is best known. Christopher Knight, the Los Angeles Times Pulitzer Prize winning art critic has written, “…Hernández’s art is

churned by her marvelous color sense, which unmoors any illustrative limits of the genre.” The legendary art historian, Margarita Nieto has also noted, "...(Her work)..speaks of woman hidden in her masks of roles...in an extraordinary combination of darkness and color, enhanced by a subconscious precognition of a mythic past." More recently, Terra Scholar and UCLA Professor of Art History, Charlene Villaseñor Black, has characterized Hernández as one of the two “most important women artists to emerge from East L.A. during El Movimiento.”

 

Over her 50+ year career, she has established a significant record of exhibitions and acquisitions of her work by major public institutions and private collections which include: the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art, Philadelphia; the National Museum of Mexican Art, Chicago; the Smithsonian American Art Museum; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Blanton Museum of Art, Austin TX; the UCI Museum/Institute for California Art; the Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture; the AltaMed Collection and the Bank of America. She has been the recipient of the prestigious Artist-in-Residence at the Center for the Study of Race, Politics, & Culture, University of Chicago; the City of Los Angeles Artist Fellowship (C.O.L.A.) and the Anonymous Was a Women Grant. In 2019, after more than 40 years, her artistic presence returned to downtown Los Angeles when her seven-story mural “La Nueva Reina de Los Angeles” was installed at La Plaza Village one block north of El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument District

 

In 2024, she will become the first artist to be given a major retrospective exhibition at the new Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture.

GALLERIES

GALLERIES

Title: An Abode for Jackals, Adam & Eve Series

ADAM & EVE SERIES

Title: Reina del Norte, Aztlan del Norte Series

AZTLAN DEL NORTE

Title: "Unconquered," the Colonization Series

COLONIZATION

SERIES

Title: "El Zapatista,", theGrafitti & Corazones Cosmicos Collections

GRAFITTI / CORAZONES

Title: Juarez: Ciudad de la Muerte," the Juarez Series

JUAREZ SERIES

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LUCHADORA SERIES

Title: Todavia Sueno de Maiposas," the Mexico Series

MEXICO SERIES

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PASTELS: 1970-1999

Titlt: "Selva de Fuego, Pastels: 2000-2022

PASTELS: 2000-2023

Title: "LA Sonata," Downtown Santa Monica Terminus Station

MTA STATION

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PUBLIC ART COMMISSIONS

Title: "Su Corazon," Serigraph

SERIGRAPHS / MONOPRINTS

CALENDAR / CONTACT

calendar/CONTACT

 2024

SPECIAL EVENT

March 4, 2024  

5pm Luskin Conference Center, University of California Los Angeles

Lecture by renown historian Charlene Villaseñor BLack, Professor & Chair of the Department of Chicana/o & Central American Studies, UCLA Art History 

EXHIBITIONS

February 3 through Aug 4, 2024 

  "Beyond Myself, Some Where, I Wait for My Arrival,"  50 year Retrospective

  Exhibition, Second Floor Galleries

  The Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture, Riverside CA

April 6 through June 4, 2024

  Arte Chicano: Hecho en Los Angeles

  California Heritage Museum, Santa Monica CA 

June 14, 2024, through January 26, 2025

  Calli: The Art of Xicanx Peoples

  Oakland Museum of California, Oakland CA 

 

October 4. 2024 - April 4, 2025 (Exact dates TBA)

  "Beyond Myself, Some Where, I Wait for My Arrival," 50-year Retrospective Exhibition

   The El Paso Museum of Art, El Paso, TX

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February 10, 2024 - Artist Reception, 50 Year Retrospective exhibition, Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture

 

(Esther Fernandez, Artistic Director, Judithe Hernández, Artist, and Cheech Marin, Actor & Founder of "The Cheech")

Judithe Hernández Studio

FOR INFORMATION regarding:

Sale of artwork

See contacts below:

WEST COAST 

 

Craig Krull Gallery

info@craigkrullgallery.com

Bergamot Station

2525 Michigan Avenue, Bldg B-3

Santa Monica, CA 90404

PH: 310.828.6410

EAST COAST 

 

Monica King Projects

FOR INFORMATION regarding:

•Commissions

•Availability for lectures/interviews

•Licencing or reproduction of images

Message Sent

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© 2024 Judithe Hernández. All rights reserved

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