Enrique Chagoya - Artist’s Talk
November 30, 2004

Enrique Chagoya will give a lecture on his work, which includes the print cycle Homage to Goya featured in Goya/Chagoya, on Tuesday, November 30 at 4:15 in Lyman Hall, Thatcher Building. There will be a reception to follow in the Museum.

Chagoya’s affinity for Francisco de Goya, whom he describes as a “visionary artist reacting to his times with the passion of his art,” is the inspiration for two suites of etchings.

My early etching series, Homage to Goya, was made over a period of nine years. The prints are almost forgeries of….The Disasters of War. The concept of this work is based on the question: How would Goya have portrayed the twentieth century if he had witnessed it, if he had traveled in time? My etchings are my own version of the answer, without pretension to compete with the old master (one of the etchings in this series is a self-portrait of my small foot entering a gigantic Goya’s shoe).

Enrique Chagoya is known for his codices projects--the first of which was done in collaboration with Guillermo Gomez-Pena, Codex Espangliensis (From Columbus to the Border Patrol). Chagoya’s codices, presented in the format of Mixtec, screen-fold manuscripts, interweave visual grammars from Western European art, pre-Columbian art, and Mexican and North American pop culture to posit a history written from the perspective of indigenous cultures. This past summer he exhibited a series of large-scale drawings in New York in which he turned to the forms of aggressive caricature associated with Daumier to comment on foreign policy.

Enrique Chagoya was born and raised in Mexico City. He received a degree in political economics at Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico and worked in rural development projects. After immigrating to the United States in 1977, he worked as a graphic designer and illustrator before studying art at the San Francisco Art Institute and the University of California-Berkeley where he received his M.F.A. Themes which he explores in his work—the aftermath of colonialism, the economic and cultural exploitation of indigenous peoples, the role of the United States as a world power, and contemporary political events—reflect his dual education as an artist and as a political activist. Enrique Chagoya is an assistant professor in the Department of Art at Stanford University. Recognition of Mr. Chagoya’s work includes the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in the Visual Arts, the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation’s Biannual Award, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. His work is in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; The Mexican Museum, San Francisco; and the National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.