Salvador Torres

Salvador Roberto Torres (born July 3, 1936) is a Chicano artist and muralist and an early exponent of the Chicano art movement. He was one of the creators of Chicano Park, and led the movement to create its freeway-pillar murals. He was also a founder of the Centro Cultural de la Raza in San Diego, California.

He was born in El Paso, Texas, but moved to San Diego with his family as a young child. He attended San Diego City College and the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland, California, where he earned a B.A.Ed. degree in art in 1964. In 1973 he earned an M.A. degree in painting and drawing from San Diego State University.

Chicano Park

Torres was raised in Barrio Logan, a neighborhood of San Diego largely inhabited by Mexican-Americans and Mexican immigrants. During his lifetime the neighborhood had been bisected by Interstate 5 and further impacted by the elevated onramps to the San Diego-Coronado Bridge. The two structures had resulted in the demolition of hundreds of homes, including his father's house where Torres had grown up. At first he deeply resented the bridge, but then he began to envision the huge concrete pillars as canvases where art could be created. He made sketches and watercolors of what such a project might look like, and in 1969 he created the Chicano Park Monumental Public Mural Program to promote his vision. in Balboa Park into a museum and cultural center with the specific mission of promoting, preserving and creating Chicano, native Mexicano, Latin American and Indian art and culture. He became the center's first director.

Later activities He produced murals for an NBC television pilot, The Fortunate Son. In 1993 he and his former wife, artist Gloria Robolledo Torres, completed the Kelco Historical Community Mural in Barrio Logan. In 2009 he was a visiting artist in residence at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

As a painter Torres is best known for his 1969 painting Viva La Raza, an oil on canvas that depicts the transformation of the eagle of the United Farm Workers of America into a rising phoenix. His work has been shown in a number of exhibitions, including Salvador Roberto Torres (1988), the nationally touring Chicano Art: Resistance and Affirmation (1990–93), and Made in California: 1900–2000 (2000).