Vincent Valdez depicts Mexican American history on a classic ice cream truck

In a room with walls lined with artwork by Edna Meyer-Nelson, Suzanne Klein and Don Normark depicting Los Angeles and the Chavez Ravine, “Vincent Valdez and Ry Cooder: El Chavez Ravine” (2005-2007), an installation depicting the violent, forced removal of a predominantly Mexican American community before the construction of Dodger Stadium, lies at the center in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA)’s exhibition. 

A collaboration between Valdez and musician-songwriter Ry Cooder, the 1953 Good Humor ice cream truck that features Valdez’s oil painting, is accompanied by the artist’s preparatory materials, including a miniature version of the truck, photographs of the two-year-long painting process and drawings of each step that would be taken. It's monument to a disturbing time in Los Angeles’s history, symbolizing the struggles with affordable housing and gentrification across the country. 

“It was important to me to try to use [‘El Chavez Ravine’] as a catalyst to generate people's imaginations today, in the 21st century, about a tale of greed, power and corruption in a city like Los Angeles,” Valdez told CALÓ News. “It isn't alone in the story and the subject of eminent domain in America.” 

Calling attention to social injustice and oftentimes white-washed history in America is not a territory Valdez is unfamiliar with. As a painter, drawer and printmaker, Valdez, who blends large, representational paintings with contemporary subject matter through vivid colors and meticulous lines, is well-known for his works such as “Requiem” (2016-19) and “The City II” (2016). 

This passion began as an innate ability for Valdez, who was born and raised by a working-class family in San Antonio, Texas. He first realized that his artistic talents differed from those around him when he was in kindergarten. “It came so normally to me,” Valdez said. “I assumed that everybody knew how to draw and was as interested or excited about drawing as I was, but I looked to the left and saw stick figures and then looked to the right and saw scribbles. I looked at my drawing of Superman or a T-Rex and there was an actual form and anatomical structure.”

As an individual who understood his calling at such a young age, Valdez began sharing creativity with his community at the age of 10. It continued throughout the entirety of his youth, when he started painting murals.

“I not only learned the basic principles of being a painter, the several materials and tools and how to construct images, but I was mostly interested in framing images as a storyteller, to give a message back to people and to make images about people and for people,” Valdez said.

Taking the next step toward his art career, Valdez left the city he called home for the first time to attend the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), where he received his BFA in 2000. There, he not only increased his knowledge of and devotion to the practice and legacy of drawing, but Valdez also realized the great responsibility that goes along with such talent. 

“What was I going to do with [my talent]? What was I going to say?” Valdez said. “It wasn't enough to make a drawing for the sake of making a picture, it had to be of service in some way, whether it was to a community or a society. I knew that being an artist, for me, was going to be extremely important. It was gonna be my life path because I considered and viewed myself as a storyteller, as a messenger in some way.”

One year after he graduated from RISD, Valdez released his vivid, realistic and gruesome piece, “Kill The Pachuco Bastard!” (2001), which depicts the 1943 Zoot Suit Riots, catapulting him into a successful and fulfilling career. The artist went on to create more oil paintings including “Eaten (In America)” ( 2018-19), “Godspeed” (2019), “It Was Never Yours” (2019) and “People of the Sun (Grandparents Santana)” (2019), along with 11 series, such as “Excerpts for John” (2010-12), “Somewhere In South Texas” (2016), ink on paper, and “Amnesia” (2023-Present).

At first glance, after being immediately met with his incredible talent and the question, “Is this truly brush strokes on canvas or a photograph?” Valdez’s powerful images that confront injustice and inequity while imbuing his subjects with empathy and humanity, force viewers to delve past the surface of beauty and into the depths of history, whether they like it or not. 

Despite the artist’s ability to counter the systemic efforts that create a fog of social amnesia surrounding historical events through his work, he doesn’t exactly consider himself an activist. Because there are individuals who are putting their bodies on the line while he paints in the comfort of his studio, he sees his creation of art as a small act of resistance. 

“If I can counter this by creating these small reminders for the public about histories that have been whitewashed, erased, forgotten and denied, then maybe I can help members of society today remember that we are all connected,” Valdez told CALÓ News. “Historically, we are not alone in our struggles. These points in time have come and gone. This is nothing new. If we pay attention to history, we know that historically speaking, the path that this nation is currently walking down leads to a very, very disruptive future.”

Out of his multitude of art pieces, Valdez’s collaborative project, “Vincent Valdez and Ry Cooder: El Chavez Ravine” (2005-2007), is a well-known piece, especially by Angelenos. What is now a successful and meaningful truck exhibited at LACMA until August, started with a simple phone call in 2004. Cooder, an L.A. native-born musician, film score composer and writer known for his slide guitar work, had decided to create his album, "Chávez Ravine: A Record by Ry Cooder," which paid homage to the memory and tales of the residents who were the heart of the neighborhoods of La Loma, Bishop and Palo Verde. 

Along with the album, Cooder had the vision of having The Duke’s Car Club, who are based in LA, reconstruct a 1953 Chevrolet Good Humor ice cream truck because, regardless of class, the two individuals who wander in and out of American neighborhoods are the mailman and the ice cream man. Valdez’s job was to paint the entire body of his new canvas to depict, at the time, the 70-year-old story that takes place from sunrise to sunset. But what interested the painter in this project was not only the story of the Chávez Ravine, but the opportunity to use this as the catalyst in generating people’s minds to realize that the tale of greed, power and corruption is not alone in L.A., but can find kinship in San Antonio, as well as Nevada, New York and Chicago. 

“[Greed, power and corruption] was as American as apple pie, and it was running more rapidly than ever,” Valdez said. “It's so easy to look at a historical tale like the Chávez Ravine and say, ‘Those poor residents. But we're glad that that doesn't happen anymore.’ Sports stadiums in America alone are a subject that we should all be extremely observant of in the ways that our communities are affected. There's a reason that you don't find sports stadiums landing in the center of Beverly Hills or Santa Monica. [They’re] almost always in the poor, marginalized and working-class communities.”

“El Chavez Ravine,” originally thought to take four to six months to complete, took Valdez about two years. But before the San Antonio artist could put oil paint to metal and construct the skeletal framework of the designs, he had to fully immerse himself into his subject, L.A., and do in-depth research to correctly portray the images he had mapped out, such as palette and how color resonates with specific subjects. 

“I was watching sunsets, I was studying soil, plants and trees,” Valdez said. “It was a new territory for me, a new environment, because California is very different from the landscape in Texas. These are things that I think about and obsess about. I create these strategies for myself, almost like these small games, that keep me entertained and interested. But I know that, for the viewer, it will help to seduce you and keep you there just long enough to help you begin to pay closer attention to what you're seeing.” 

Beginning on the driver’s side of the Good Humor truck, Valdez perches admirers atop L.A.’s hills to gaze down at the 110 freeway, leading to City Hall, which is haloed by a bright sunrise that becomes a hazy and nuclear sunset as your eyes move right. Valdez’s depiction of the subject matter of the city and the environmental landscape remains black and white as the sky transitions from cotton candy pink to a deep purple and nightmarish red as you make your way around the back of the vehicle to the passenger side. 

Passing the cluster of mailboxes and a letter to the Palo Verde and Chávez Ravine families from the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles, the red and purple palette brings you into the McCarthyism and Red Scare – paranoia about the internal Communist threat – of the 1950s. Along with images of Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley, former LAPD Chief William H. Parker and  J. Edgar Hoover, the artist beautifully and gut-wrenchingly portrays the violent displacement of the Chávez Ravine families. It isn’t until you reach the hood of the truck that you come face-to-face with modern-day Dodger Stadium, but not without the remnants of the structural destruction of homes on the left and blueprints and redevelopment plans on the right. 

“It's like that moment in the Wizard of Oz when Dorothy walks out, and the black and white has now morphed into color,” Valdez said. “She can see clearly, it's reality. She’s sort of waking from a dream, and that's exactly what happens with the truck. There's one single yellow brick road path at the beginning and very, very few people notice it. Visually, it’s leading your eyes ... to walk around the truck is this one path that flows from beginning to end. Even though these are details that I know most people may not catch, I’m thinking about ways to keep you there, to move you. To keep your mind and your eyes interested.”

While the canvas is very large, Valdez was still limited on the details and aspects of history he wanted to incorporate into the piece, forcing him to become his own best editor. Rather than focus on what he couldn’t do, the artist had the goal of making this painting personal to the viewer, as if they were transported into this world and its palette. “I couldn't depict every family member who resided in that area, but I knew that if I could make a somewhat sweeping idea of that time and place, it would be enough to take you here,” Valdez said. “I knew the handful of figures that I wanted to portray because, to me, they created this wider net that encompassed not only the city of LA and its politics but a nation and its politics at that moment in time.”

Valdez’s goal to resonate with viewers and draw them into the piece was a successful one, at least in Lynell George’s opinion. A journalist, essayist and author born and based in L.A., George has known both Cooder and Valdez since 2004 and was the mediator of their discussion of “El Chavez Ravine”at LACMA on February 12. She has also had the opportunity to witness families of those displaced over 70 years ago reflect on the ugly history endured. 

“To be in the gallery and hear people tell stories as they stood around the truck and talked about history,” George said. “They were talking about what they remembered and what their families remembered about [Chávez Ravine]. That's what Vincent's work does so powerfully. He makes history current and come alive. [He] makes people aware of things that they didn't know about. There's something about the vividness that you have a visceral reaction to and that, to me, is one of his strengths. He’s so sunk into history and wants to make it legible.” 

American painters such as George Bellows, Paul Cadmus and Ben Shahn, along with artists who have been imperative to the civil rights and Chicano movement, like Luis Jiménez, John Valadez, Kathy Vargas and César Martinez, deeply resonate with Valdez as an artist, which only pushes him further to educate current generations on the histories of Chicanos and Mexican Americans. As he stands on the shoulders of the artists who came before him and works alongside others, the painter feels that Latinos must seek out their legacies to learn and share with their communities to not allow these histories to be repeated. 

“Telling the story and sharing it with the community, as a Chicano, Mexican American artist, and citizen, it is of the utmost importance, it’s a sense of urgency, to help others feel ignited by these images that they are looking at,” Valdez said. “I hope that these images stir up something within the viewer to make them more curious. To haunt them in a way that they can't shake these ideas, these concepts, these images, these visuals from their minds. This is what sparks imagination and curiosity enough to open a book, to connect the dots in your communities once you go home, in your own sort of realities.” 

It’s not only important for Latinos to become knowledgeable about the violent story of the Chávez Ravine, as well as the entirety of our history, to ensure that we don’t allow them to be repeated, but to also allow them to live on. The strength and durability of the Latino community in general, specifically the displaced Mexican American families whose homes were bulldozed, deserves to not only be remembered but permanently exemplified through art as Valdez has done. And with gentrification spreading throughout L.A., especially in Boyle Heights, it is even more critical to have a reminder of the fight previous neighborhoods have undergone. 

“You have the neighborhood on the truck, and then you have the neighborhood in the room,” George said. “It's a reminder, looking at the story of Chávez Ravine, about how important it is to fight Goliath. You may win, you may not win, but fighting is important. Look at the people who did and see how strong those families still are, who still meet. Those bonds go beyond the neighborhood.”

In the past two decades, Valdez has embedded himself into the L.A. communities of Boyle Heights and Lincoln Heights, as well as Houston, Texas, in addition to his native San Antonio. Being a Mexican American / Chicano has given the artist the ability to live in multiple worlds, whether it’s the literal border of Texas or the figurative one between mainstream American and Chicano, Latinx art. He has created a body of work that not only speaks to the communities he has inhabited but also America at large. 

Despite the current struggles of Black and Brown communities, whose history and power have shaped the U.S. into what it is today, and the work that is still left to be done, Valdez looks onto younger generations with hope and optimism as they follow in the footsteps of historic legacies of resistance. 

“We are at a real turning point in this nation, where a lot of these tensions do exist because there’s an undeniable presence of Latinos in this nation who are not afraid to stand and speak up,” Valdez said. “Art is as powerful as it is resilient but it is not enough. I've never convinced myself that a single painting is going to topple a world government, change politics or solve poverty in this country, but we all have to be tiny sparks in a raging wildfire. When I look back at the legacies of Chicano muralism in the 1960s and 70s, that was a reminder of trying to find a way to be my own tiny spark in a much bigger movement.”

While “El Chavez Ravine” is on display at LACMA for viewers until August, Valdez is working on a solo exhibition, Vincent Valdez: Just a Dream…, that will be on display at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston from November 15, 2024 through March 23, 2025, and MASS MoCA from March 24, 2025 through April 5, 2026. As the artist’s first major museum survey that displays his work spanning over two decades, viewers will see his early-stage drawings to current paintings conversing with each other for the first time. “I tend to work on such a large scale, one piece at a time, and devote so much time to one project that leaves the studio, so my biggest curiosity, excitement and fear is walking into this one space and getting a very clear idea of what my vision has been focused on over the past few decades,” Valdez said. 

Simultaneously, Valdez will be one of the photorealism artists exhibited in “Ordinary People: Photorealism and the Work of Art since 1968,” the first large-scale exhibition to reexamine the postwar art movement of photorealism and trace its art lineage of the present day that includes more than 40 artists, at the Museum of Contemporary Art LA from November 24, 2024 through May 4, 2025. 

During his artistic career Valdez has received numerous grants and most recently was the 2022 recipient of the Ford and Mellon Foundations Latinx Artist Fellowship. Last year, he was a participant in the Arion Press’ King Residency. 

Valdez’s deep-rooted devotion to his craft for 25 years and the world around him makes him the artist he is today. And it’s exactly what he plans to continue while working in both L.A. and Houston. 

“I will always exist as an outsider and observer, whether it's here in California and L.A., on the East Coast or even in my home region and territory of Texas,” Valdez said. “As an artist, I am content with being an onlooker, bearing witness to the essence and the real-life force of cities and communities, which are working people who inhabit the streets and are keeping cities forever in flux and motion. For as long as I can, I will continue to make these images [and] hopefully reflect a little bit of what I see.”