Juana Alicia is a muralist, studio painter, sculptor, designer and educator working in the San Francisco Bay Area and Mexico. She came of age in Detroit during the Civil Rights Movement, creating posters to support the boycott and organizing efforts of the United Farm Workers and other social movements. In her early twenties, she was recruited by Cesar Chavez to work for the union, and moved to Salinas to participate in the organizing and strikes of the early seventies. Since those formative years, her work has reflected a commitment to social justice, human rights and environmental health.

 

 Her large body of sculptural and painted public works can be seen in Nicaragua, Mexico, Pennsylvania and in many parts of California, most notably in San Francisco. Her work is associated with the greatest artistic and political achievements of the Chicano movement. She works in many different media to create both private and public works of art. These include drawing, printmaking, small-format painting, monumental acrylic, fresco, tile and sculptural murals and other sculptural forms. Her work evolved from the streets of San Francisco’s Mission District, whose mural renaissance is legendary, to installations in other parts of the U.S. and Latin America. She began painting acrylic murals, and expanded to ceramics, bas relief, cement and metal sculpture. She seeks to create architectonic and sculptural works in a cityscape with an increasingly green and sustainable urban vision.