Later, Hernandez’s work shifted to Chicano noir, darker, denser, more violent paintings. “But he humanized them, and they weren’t just caricatures any longer.” “Yes, they dressed the way they dressed, they looked like cholos,” Bravo said. And Hernandez’s paintings for the film captured hopeful images. The film sent the message that being an artist is a possibility for Latinos, he said.
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It appeared on the movie “Blood In Blood Out.” Courtesy San Antonio Museum of Art "Juanito," a 1991 painting by Adan Hernandez, is in the collection of the San Antonio Museum of Art. “Those paintings were tremendously important in the Chicano imagination because where were you going to see paintings in the barrio? There were no museums, no retail art galleries,” he said. The movie is what catapulted him into that tier, Bravo said. Independent curator Joseph Bravo, who was friends with Hernandez for more than 20 years, sees the late artist as one of the biggies of Chicano art, putting him on the same level as Mel Casas, Jesse Treviño and César Martínez. “His work will live on after him, and I think it’s going to be significant for art history one day.” “But it’s going to be sad, looking at all his work that’s going to be past work, not the stuff he still wanted to paint,” he said.
Borrego still hopes to make that happen, with works by Hernandez as a centerpiece. And they had hoped to one day open a Chicano art museum on the West Side. Borrego, a fellow San Antonian, also spent a lot of time time in Hernandez’s studio, watching him work and folding details from those hours into his performance.
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And he taught Borrego how to mix paint and how to hold a paintbrush. In addition to providing the paintings for the movie, he appeared in a brief scene. In interviews, he recalled that he was working so fast and so long that his hands cramped and his vision was impaired. He often completed a painting a day to meet the tight deadline. Hackford asked Hernandez to create more than 30 paintings ascribed to Borrego’s character. Hernandez was hired for the project after a production designer happened to see some of his work in a gallery window in San Antonio, where the crew had considered shooting the film. The 1993 film follows three young gang members in East Los Angeles whose lives follow divergent paths as adults- one goes to prison (Damian Chapa), one becomes a cop (Bratt) and one becomes an artist (Jesse Borrego).
Melissa Richardson Banks Show More Show LessĪs news of the artist’s death reached Hollywood, his family received condolence calls from some of the people who worked on “Blood In Blood Out,” his younger brother Armando said, including director Taylor Hackford and costar Benjamin Bratt. File photo Show More Show Less 2 of2Ĭheech Marin (left) posted a photo of himself with San Antonio artist Adan Hernandez to his Instagram account after learning of Hernandez’ death. All three worked on the film “Blood In, Blood Out.” The paintings is now in the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. San Antonio artist Adan Hernandez (right) off his painting “La Media Luna” with director Taylor Hackford (left) and designer Bruno Rubeo.