Shifra Goldman was a civil rights and anti-Vietnam War activist who joined the Mexican American rights movement in Los Angeles and helped elevate Latin American and Chicano art history into legitimate fields of study.

By Elaine Woo elaine.woo@latimes.com, Los Angeles Times, September 19, 2011, 9:22 a.m.

In the early 1970s, when Shifra Goldman proposed a doctoral dissertation on modern Mexican art, her professors at UCLA sneered. Compared to European art, the art of Latin America was, in their view, imitative, too political, unworthy of serious scholarly attention.

But Goldman, a scrappy civil rights and anti-Vietnam War activist who went back to school in her mid-30s, refused to consider a more mainstream topic. Describing herself years later as a person who was “born … Read more

by Mandalit del Barco, NPR
October 26, 2010

Nearly 80 years after Mexican muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros left Los Angeles, he is once again creating a buzz in the city.

In 1932, a mural Siqueiros was commissioned to paint turned out to be a controversial piece of art that was quickly censored. For decades, Chicano artists and activists have worked to bring the mural back to life — and that mission will soon be accomplished.

Siqueiros On Olvera Street

Early last century, Siqueiros, Diego Rivera and Jose Orozco were the three major politically active Mexican muralists who merged revolutionary ideas with public street art.

But Siqueiros’ prominence in Mexico didn’t do much to keep him out of trouble. In 1932, the artist was jailed for … Read more

Published in The Economist – September 23, 2010

THEN, as now, the economy was depressed and America was deporting Mexicans in droves. The year was 1932 and David Alfaro Siqueiros, a Mexican artist who now ranks with Diego Rivera and Jose Clemente Orozco as one of the three great Mexican muralists of the last century, arrived in Los Angeles. His visit was to prove unexpectedly short (seven months), but consequential. The tale is documented in an exhibition that has just opened at the Autry in Griffith Park in the city.

Like Rivera, who was ten years older and a mentor until the two fell out over politics, Siqueiros was a Communist. After Mexico’s revolution he founded a union and may also have plotted to kill … Read more

Originally published in Mark Vallen’s Art for a Change blog on June 12, 2010.

Since January 2005, this web log has been following the history of América Tropical – the famous 1932 mural painted by Mexican Muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros on Olvera Street in downtown Los Angeles. So it is my pleasure to announce the first of three important L.A. panel discussions regarding the mural and the legacy of Siqueiros.

Organized by Amigos de Siqueiros and moderated by painter Raoul De la Sota, América Tropical At Last is an artist organized forum that will present “an overview of the career of David Alfaro Siqueiros and a discussion of the social and political events during which he worked.”

Panelists will include the creative director of the … Read more