Carmen Lomas Garza

Carmen Lomas Garza (born 1948) is a Chicana artist and illustrator. She is well known for her paintings, ofrendas and for her papel picado work inspired by her Mexican-American heritage. Her work is a part of the permanent collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the National Museum of Mexican Art, the San Jose Museum of Art, the Mexican Museum, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and the Oakland Museum of California, among other institutions.

Early years Garza was born in 1949 in Kingsville, Texas. She is the second of five children. Garza loved watching her mother paint, and felt like what her mother did was magic. Garza helped her grandmother create embroidery patterns using paper cutouts as a young child. The influence of her mother's and grandmother's art-making was very strong and by age thirteen Garza had decided she would be an artist. Her parents encouraged her to pursue her interests in college. Her parents had been involved in political organizing through the American GI Forum, and Garza followed in their footsteps by organizing a book store Chicanos on her college campus. Garza learned to be proud of her culture and wanted to educate others using her art.

As of 1976, Garza lives in San Francisco, California.

Career Walter Alvarez (2019), at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. The initial roots of Garza's artwork lay in her family, to whom she is close, and in the Chicano Movement. Garza later wrote that the Chicano Movement nourished her goal of being an artist and gave her back her voice. She says that her artistic creations helped her "heal the wounds inflicted by discrimination and racism." Her choice to use personal and family images to combat racism is a departure from more political works by many Chicano artists. The creation of her narrative, rather than one that is forced on her, however, speaks against racism on its own. Her paintings are also idealized and the figures become archetypes. Her flattened figures and sense of space create "a sense of immediacy," letting the viewer interact directly with the subject matter.

Garza has made Day of the Dead ofrendas, or ritual altars, to honor not just family members, but also people from history. She has made ofrendas for Frida Kahlo, Doña Sebastiana, and Tenochtitlán. In Chan Kaajal Park, a park opened in 2017 in San Francisco's Mission District, features renderings of a California condor and a great blue heron by Garza, commissioned by the San Francisco Arts Commission.

As an author-illustrator, Garza has authored bilingual children's books that are notable for the bilingual text and vivid illustrations. She draws on Chicano culture, family stories, memories, and her heritage. Her archives are held by the Benson Latin American Collection.

Exhibitions In 2013, Garza's Cama para Suenos (1985) and Loteria-Tabla Llena (1972) were included in the Smithsonian American Art Museum's Our America: The Latino Presence in American Art.

Garza was also featured in the University of Texas at Austin's 7th Annual ¡A Viva Voz! where she talked and exhibited over 20 of her works. The exhibit ran from April through August 2009.

Carmen Lomas Garza: A Retrospective was Garza's first retrospective and featured work from the mid-1970s to the present. It was organized by the San Jose Museum of Art, where it was on view from January to April 2001; it later traveled to the San Antonio Museum of Art, South Texas Institute for the Arts, Ellen Noël Art Museum, National Hispanic Cultural Center, and the Polk Museum of Art.

Awards and honors Family Pictures/Cuadro de familia: One of the Best Books of the Year, Library of Congress (1990) Several California Arts Council Artist-in-Residence Grants

A primary school in Los Angeles, the Carmen Lomas Garza Primary Center, is named in Garza's honor.