Existing comment:
René Castro
born Viña del Mar, Chile 1943
Víctor Jara
1986
screenprint on paper
Gift of Gilberto Cárdenas and Dolores García, 2019.51.35
Víctor Jara was a leftist folk singer when he was apprehended, tortured, and killed during the early days of Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship in Chile. Artist René Castro, who himself escaped Chilean concentration camps and settled in San Francisco, became a valued member of the Chicano-Latino art scene in the Bay Area. He often created prints to raise awareness of international struggles against dictatorship and war, especially those marked by U.S. intervention. Here he depicts a youthful Jara, rendered in intense colors alongside a hopeful lyric from one of his songs. |