Marcos Raya

Born in Irapuato, Guanajuato, Mexico, Marcos Raya spent the first 16 years of his life there before moving to the US with his family. Raya first became inspired to become an artist from an interaction he had with a mural created by Jose Chavez Morado and the artist himself at the young age of 10. Having a father that was also an artist, he was constantly surrounded by art in his life that he was able to pick it up as something he wanted to do.

Escaping their family’s poverty, Raya moved to Chicago in 1964 in the middle of the Civil Rights Movement. He found that the circumstances and situation of the movement allowed him to express his political sentiment through his artwork. He attended Upward Bound, an inner-city youth program, at Windsor Mountain School in Lenox, MA to study art. Through this experience and being the only Mexican origin student, he found that he couldn’t express what he wanted. He knew his call for action aligned with the movement of the black community, but didn’t truly feel connected to it. From participating in protests against the Mexican government in Mexico City, to cantina exploitation of the Latino stereotypes to appeal to the white art community, Raya felt that something needed to be done for the Chicano’s in America.

Raya created his first mural in 1970 entitled We Shall Overcome the Ruins of Fascism. Very soon murals became an important activity for PIlsen and as such, Raya met Ray Patlan in 1972 who had a role in starting Casa Aztlan and spent some time working on public murals in Chicago. Quickly, Raya played a monumental role in the growth of muralism and the mural movement in Pilsen, especially in creating a sense of pride and identity to the Mexican American community. His work, overly political, focuses on themes of economic disparity, racism, illness, and alcoholism.

Internationally acclaimed, Raya has recognitions at the Museum of Modern Art in Mexico City, Mexican Museum in San Francisco, the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago, the Chicago Cultural Center, Carl Hammer Gallery in Chicago, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. Most famously, he was one of two Chicago artists to be included in the exhibit “Chicano Art: Resistance and Affirmation, 1965-1985” that opened in 1990 at UCLA’s Wright Gallery and toured the country through 1993. His Paintings, installations, assemblages, photographs and painted furniture have been featured in four Latino art exhibitions that have traveled Mexico, Japan, and the US in the early 1990’s. Having retired himself from muralism, he remains critical of mainstream murals and their ability to “lose a lot more freedom to be political” . Now, he remains focused on surrealist paintings and installations.