Judithe Hernández

During the momentous decade of the 1960’s, Judithe Hernández began her career as an artist-activist and founding member of the Chicano Art and Los Angeles Mural Movements. As the only female member of the seminal and influential East Los Angeles artist collective Los Four, she spent the early part of her career creating highly charged political art in support of such causes as the Chicano Moratorium Against the War (in Vietnam) and the farm labor issues of César Chávez and the United Farm Workers Union. Concentrating on her studio work since the mid 1980’s, she has exhibited extensively in the United States, Mexico, and Europe, including the ground-breaking first exhibition of contemporary Chicano art in Europe, Le Démon des Anges. Her works are part of several public and private collections such as the Bank of America Corporate Collection, the State of California Collection, the Latino Museum of Art, History, and Culture, and the National Museum of Mexican Art. Commenting upon Hernández’s work in the catalogue for her solo exhibition at the Cayman Gallery in New York, Artistic Director Gladys Peña wrote, “At first glance, the drawings of Judithe Hernández present to the spectator familiar forms and surroundings. The imagery is simple, the colors are dense and forceful but not disturbing in themselves. Nevertheless, one cannot walk away easily. A type of irony exists, and the viewer is held captive by the unexpected.” In 2010, she will have solo exhibitions at the National Museum of Mexican Art and Woman Made Gallery.

© Judithe Hernández