San Antonian Ramon Vasquez y Sanchez has been many things: an advocate for indigenous Americans, an activist for social justice and Chicano rights, an agitator against injustice and an ardent preserver of local and regional history.
He has also been an artist, working diligently across seven decades in his favored mediums of oil and acrylic paint, pencil, pen and ink, and silkscreen.
This spring, a retrospective of his artwork from the 1950s through his current works will go on display at the Spirit Waters Art Gallery inside the new American Indians in Texas at the Spanish Colonial Missions (AIT-SCM) complex on East Commerce Street.
Vasquez y Sanchez’s son, AIT-SCM Executive Director Ramon Juan Vasquez, hopes his father’s commitment to fighting injustice will be evident in the paintings, drawings and prints.
“Taking a look at his fight for justice over the years, that’s what has informed all of his art,” Vasquez said.
Many of Vasquez y Sanchez’s scenes will be familiar to San Antonians, depicting the five Missions and such notable settings as the Spanish Governor’s Palace. What sets these apart is Vasquez y Sanchez’s desire to humanize the old churches and farmlands that surrounded them with figures of the people who lived and worked there hundreds of years ago. Without the figures, Vasquez said, these places would “look like relics of the past;” his father aims to remind everyone that they were once the homes of real human beings.
Read the full article at the San Antonio Report.