Maria de Mexico from the collection of LBCC Art Gallery

Maria de Mexico, 1994

Lithograph

22.25 x 16.75 in (56.52 x 42.55 cm)

A lithograph by John M. Valadez (b. 1951, Los Angeles), a key figure in the Chicano Arts Movement. At the center is María de México—a young woman with shadowed eyes and rouged lips—set within an elaborate colonial Baroque cartouche. The ornate frame, decorated with gemstone motifs and inhabited by small human figures and hybrid creatures, reflects a layered visual vocabulary. Her image emerges from a fissure in the earth beneath a star-filled sky, while a dusty road extends into the foreground.
Created in 1994, the work reflects ongoing Chicano cultural discourse amid a politically tense period. María appears as a symbolic figure—invoking La Virgen and the working-class Chicana—while the surrounding imagery draws from Catholic iconography and surrealist elements to explore identity, history, and representation in a postcolonial framework

Description written by Jin Mo, 2025.

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