Mujeres Muralistas. Latinoamerica. 1974. 25th and Mission
Streets, San Francisco, California. (Photo: Eva Cockcroft.)

T

of a primitive literalism with surrealist images,
has created a series of ambitious underpass
murals in the Hyde Park area of Chicago. Holly
Highfill, who painted an anti-war mural in the
Loop area of Chicago (1973), has gone on to do
several succeeding walls with gang youth.
Marie Burton, who with Highfill and Rogovin
co-authored the Mural Manual, works primarily
with teenagers. Her Bored of Education in Chi-
cago (1971) and the Celebration of Cultures in
Milwaukee (1975) are among the most impres-
sive of the school murals. And these are just a
few of the women muralists working on com-
munity walls in a way that might be called the
“Chicago model” (others are Justine DeVan,
Esther Charbit, Ruth Felton, and Celia Radek).

In the Chicago model, the artist-leader of a
mural team, using community and youth input,
designs the wall and directs the painting of it.
The community participates as a new class of
patrons who help to pay for the mural and are
consulted on the design. In spite of the change
in patronage, and participation of community
people as team members, the Chicago model’s
emphasis on professionalism is fairly close to
the mural tradition through the ages. Murals,
after all, have rarely been painted by individu-
als; mostly they are done by a group of assis-
tants working under a master.

This hierarchical process has been challenged
by several developments within the mural
movement. One is the experimentation with

artists’ collectives. A collective is a very diffi-
cult and highly unstable form of organization in
a society emphasizing individualism, and few
last longer than a year or two. Many women
muralists have come into the movement as or-
ganizers or members of a collective group. The
mutual support and shared responsibility the
collective offers an individual is often necessary
to provide the courage to attempt a first mural
(and some of the labor power to finish it). Es-
pecially in the case of women this factor can be
decisive.

Within the Latin culture, machismo often
reaches rather extreme forms, yet this is coun-
tered by a strong communal tradition. It is not
surprising therefore that in 1974 a group of Latin
American women muralists—Mujeres Muralis-
tas—was formed in San Francisco. Most of the
women were students or recent graduates of the
San Francisco Art Institute and connected with
the Galeria de La Raza, the center for Chicano
artists in the Mission district. Their philosophy
was simple and very positive:

Our cultures, our images are strong. It is im-
portant that the atmosphere of the world be
plagued with color and life. Throughout His-
tory there have been very few women who
have figured in art. What you see is proof that
women, too, can work at this level. That we
can put together scaffolding and climb it. We
offer you the colors that we make.

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