Famed mural artist holds exhibition and sale of his life's work

Mar. 13—Janitorial work led famed muralist Gilberto Guzmán to a life of art.

He was "cleaning up," as he put it, at Woodbury University when he stumbled upon an exhibition of art in an auditorium during his teen years in Los Angeles.

Until then, the barrio kid turned boxer — a good way to survive the tough streets in the 1940s, he said — had no ambition to be an artist.

He's not even sure, looking back decades later, if he had any ambition to be anything at all.

"In East L.A. you didn't have many choices," said the 91-year-old as he sat in El Museo Cultural de Santa Fe, surrounded by about 30 of his children.

His creative offspring consist of clowns and women and musicians and Mother Earth and the late, great jazz singer Billie Holiday, all birthed by Guzmán through the labor-inducing process of painting.

The acrylic on canvas works are going on sale this week in an exhibition that opens with a reception for the artist from 4 to 7 p.m. Thursday at El Museo Cultural. It will be on view at the museum during regular hours of operation through the end of the month.

It's a pictorial wall parade of vibrant colors brightening often somber images of sad clowns, doomed musical artists — like Holliday — and people harvesting, which is something Guzmán did as a kid.

He does not feel old, he said as he stared at some of the works, but he is aware this could be one of his last exhibitions. "I still feel young," he said, his oxygen tank nearby. "I'm not very handicapped by age."

As for anyone remembering him for his artistic legacy, he shrugged.

"They don't have to remember me," he said as a pair of aides hung some of his works and attended to some last-minute details in preparation for the show. "If they enjoy my work, great. But me as a person? Not very important."

In 2017, Guzmán was honored as a Santa Fe Living Treasure for his mural work in such places as the Bataan Memorial Building, the New Mexico State Library, the state Capitol and the now-gone Halpin Building on Guadalupe Street.

That last mural, depicting an array of cultural events and people, brought Guzmán attention and grief several years ago as he filed a lawsuit to stop the state Department of Cultural Affairs from removing the mural, painted in 1980, as part of the agency's plan to build the Vladem Contemporary museum at the Halpin Building site.

In the fall of 2021 the department and Guzmán came to a settlement agreement that included a commitment from the museum to display a scaled-down version of the Multi-Cultural mural that Guzmán painted with other street artists.

Guzmán said he feels "very good" about the way that worked out. He's got plenty of other works, he said, and he still tries to draw and paint in his Santa Fe home. Working as an artist from home is better than having a studio, he said: "I can just get up and paint."

He recalled first drawing and painting in his early 20s, creating replicas of Norman Rockwell magazine images. He liked what came out. "I finally found where I belong," he said.

But that was after he served as a paratrooper in the U.S. Army during the Korean War era, though he did not see battle. He joined in 1949, he said, because in the heady post-World War II years, it was still the thing to do for many Americans.

This despite his childhood recollection of seeing U.S. military personnel driving trucks into Chicano barrios in Los Angeles to beat and inflict racial violence on the residents. "I was afraid," he said of those times.

He left the Army in the early 1950s and attended what is now known as the Academy of Art University in San Francisco in the late 1960s. What did he do in between?

"Nothing," he said.

Though he was creating art during that time — one of the pieces in the show dates as far back as 1968 — he had little interest in attending art school until friends urged him to consider it.

He thought about the idea. He wondered if "maybe I missed something" in his self-education as an artist.

It was a good thing he did go to college, he said — "I was missing a lot."

He liked drawing live models in what were 15-minute sketching classes because he had to think hard and create fast, a trait that has come in handy over the years.

He was older than most of the other students when he graduated, he said — about 40. Around that time he met a woman at a rally in Berkeley, Calif., to free political activists from jail. She was a nurse from Santa Fe. She led him to the City Different in 1971, and he felt right at home.

Guzmán said he gives little if any thought to how people interpret his works. Nor does he set out with a specific thematic goal in mind when he paints.

"It's for people to enjoy it," he said. "If they enjoy it, great. If not, it doesn't matter."

He said he's not sure he understands the work himself. "I just know I can do it," he said with another smile.

He likes to smile. And laugh. And joke.

One of the aides stopped to ask him his age. "I'm maybe 90-something," he said.

"I thought you said you were in your 60s," she said.

"That's for the public," he replied.