HUMANSCAPES  

Social, Sexual & Political Commentary 

No. 33 - 93  (1967-1977)

72 X 96 in  (183 X 244 cm) 

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The middle section of the Humanscape series — paintings 33 through 93, made between roughly 1967 and 1977 — is the most politically charged. This is the period of the Vietnam War, the height of the Chicano civil rights movement, and the era in which Casas most directly engaged with the relationship between American mass media and political power. The paintings in this group examine how advertising, television, and popular culture flatten, erase, or caricature Mexican American and Indigenous identities. The most analyzed work in this group is Humanscape 62, "Brownies of the Southwest" (1970), which confronts the racist Frito Bandito advertising mascot and its relationship to Mesoamerican cultural imagery. Also in this period, Humanscape 68, "Kitchen Spanish," dissects the labor exploitation embedded in the domestic lives of Latina immigrants. Several works from this period toured nationally and have been reproduced widely in Chicano art anthologies. The Smithsonian American Art Museum holds multiple paintings from this phase of the series.