PST Featured prints
Four Seasons by Alfredo de Batuc (1979)
Since 1983,
Self Help Graphics & Art’s (SHG) has commissioned the iconic Día de los Muertos Commemorative Serigraphs, internationally recognized as important works of the Chicano Art legacy. A local artist is commissioned annually to create a commemorative silkscreen print in honor of that respective year's Día de los Muertos celebration. The prints were initially created to market the celebration, serving as flyers and mailers. As the print studio became more formalized, the commemorative prints became an opportunity for artists to interpret their version of Dia de los Muertos, often - but not always - with an overlaid social justice message. The collection of commemorative prints seen here represent a wide swath of styles, technical innovations, content and artists across generations, but is by no means exhaustive. The full collection of prints can be accessed online at California Ethnic and Multicultural Archives website.
Catalog
Día de los Muertos: A Cultural Legacy, Past, Present and Future
By Betty Ann Brown, Marietta Bernstorff, Karen Mary Davalos, and Rose Salseda
Introduction by Linda Vallejo
Edited by Mary Thomas
Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) has become an entire season of celebration spanning Southern California. Beginning as early as August through November, festivals, pop-ups, and altars or ofrendas are created in diverse community based organizations, public spaces, schools, and ticketed venues. Today’s interpretation of the sacred indigenous tradition has been remixed and recycled into a commercial holiday blending Mexican, Latino, and American pop culture iconography with the spiritual aesthetics of Día de los Muertos’ indigenous and Catholic influences.
Día de los Muertos: A Cultural Legacy, Past, Present and Future gives context for the celebration at Self Help Graphics & Art, its origins and evolution into the iconic program we know in Los Angeles today. The catalogue includes four essays that dive into a deep history of the celebration’s roots, the innovation of Self Help Graphics & Art artists, the ongoing cultural exchange between the United States and Mexico and the importance of Self Help Graphics & Art community-based workshops and programming. Object images include seminal Día de los Muertos prints throughout the organization’s four-decade history, photographs, and ephemera.
- 76 pages
- Full color throughout
- 63 images
- 11" x 8.5"
- Available September 2017 online or onsite
- Pre-order starting August 15