This sensitivity to the Indians has led Acevedo to become involved with the forced relocation of the Navajo people at Big Mountain, Ariz. Acevedo and Torero share a love of art and a need to create, but also a need to record the human condition, to link art with people and the community, and with political causes.
The boy showed artistic skill by the age of 10 and soon was earning money selling tile paintings of bullfighters to tourists. A mural at Grossmont Center was torn down when the shopping mall was enlarged. His SDSU mural depicts just that. Skeletons break apart and fall in disorder near the bottom, as visionary figures rise above--held in balance by a figure representing the cosmic future, the new person born from struggle and death. By doing mural art, Torero taps back into his Incan roots.
Mural art stems from the classic American civilizations and precedes the Spanish conquistadores. Murals renew ties with the ancient, artistic ancestry and with more recent muralists, as well--Orozco, Siqueiros, Tamayo. Paul, Minn. There are several in the latter two. She had put together a border conference on Third World arts and literature, and Torero was a presenter.
He was very dramatic--verbal and flamboyant. Mario woke everybody up. Rita Acevedo had been involved with the Chicano movement. She laughed.
The couple now has two children, Lucia, 8, and Pablo, 6. He is named for Picasso, Casals and Neruda. Torero also has 3 children by an earlier marriage. Torero had spent effort trying to make a success of El Topo gallery in Old Town and the Acevedo Gallery in the Gaslamp Quarter in with his father. Solart still exists as a community cultural center with ongoing art festivals, music, projects in the street and video programs.
In , Rita Acevedo took a year off to care for her two babies. She and her husband were unemployed. Mario had a spiritual vision. They were a tight group. A: It was fun and was about being able to produce works of art that could be admired and valued. I saw what the others were doing, and I knew that I could do better.
I saw some fantastic art, and I thought that I could do it, too. I was connected to him and saw and felt his moves, and I admired him. We were similar, and now, long after his death, he is me or I am him. And this reality will happen through any creative actions we take in community with students, other artists and art lovers. It is the way to give a silent majority voice and presence. Can you tell us about why you wanted to be involved with both of these spaces at that time?
We took over the building, occupied it, to create a Centro Cultural de la Raza. We started the Chicano Movement as most of the Mexican-Americans shed the labels placed on us, and we created this new culture. A: Just look at how we have grown in our first 49 years. In , we were segregated. There were no Chicanos anywhere in San Diego, except in the barrios.
Now, we are everywhere, except on television and the movies. The school system is overwhelmingly brown everywhere in the city and state.
Chicano Park, which in the beginning was ignored and rejected by the city, we adore what we have there with all the growing visitors coming to see the vibrant arts district of San Diego in Barrio Logan. Can you name a couple of these artists and tell us a little about them and their work?
A: Chicanos have been overlooked, like non-existent, in the mainstream, but our art and culture have been changing that. A homegrown graffiti artist who was raised with the art of the park and with the maestros that painted them, he came to me one day, years ago. He volunteered to work with me while I was working on beautifying Logan Avenue by painting the electrical boxes. By Alexandra Mendoza. While most people could not pinpoint the exact date in which they discovered their mission in life, Mario Torero remembers it very clearly.
On January 1, , the now-renowned muralist had a brush with death which left him in a coma. When he awoke from his ordeal, he started to assess many parts of his life. Mario Acevedo Torero was born in Lima, Peru in Mario and his family migrated to the United States when he was 12; since then, he has called San Diego home.
Mere days after his near-death experience, Mario Torero met Salvador Torres, another artist and muralist with whom a few months later he would co-found — along with other artists — the Centro Cultural de la Raza in Balboa Park. They won the fight, and today the park has become an icon for Chicano, Latin American and Mexican-American culture in the United States. Once the community took over the space, the effort began to turn it into a place where art could converge.
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