Balmy Alley (formally Balmy Street) is a one-block-long

alley An alley or alleyway is a narrow lane, path, or passageway, often reserved for pedestrians, which usually runs between, behind, or within buildings in the older parts of towns and cities. It is also a rear access or service road (back lane ...

that is home to the most concentrated collection of murals in the city of

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17t ...

. It is located in the south central portion of the Inner Mission District between 24th Street and

Garfield Square Garfield Square, also known as Garfield Park, is a city park located in the Mission District of San Francisco, California. It is bounded by 25th Street to the north, 26th Street to the south, Treat Avenue to the west, and Harrison Street to the ...

. Since 1973, most buildings on the street have been decorated with a

mural A mural is any piece of graphic artwork that is painted or applied directly to a wall, ceiling or other permanent substrate. Mural techniques include fresco, mosaic, graffiti and marouflage. Word mural in art The word ''mural'' is a Spanis ...

History

The earliest murals in the alley date to 1972, painted by Mia Galivez and children in a local child care center. Artists Patricia Rodriquez and Graciela Carillo had rented an apartment on Balmy Alley and painted their first mural in the Alley, a jungle-underwater scene, in 1973. Their two-woman team soon expanded and became known as '' Las Mujeres Muralistas''. Fellow member Irene Perez painted her own mural on the alley in 1973, depicting two back-to-back figures painting flutes. In 1984, in a second significant wave of murals in the alley, Ray Patlan spearheaded the PLACA project to install murals throughout the alley featuring the common theme of a celebration of indigenous Central American cultures and a protest of US intervention in Central America. Topics of the murals included the

Nicaraguan revolution The Nicaraguan Revolution ( es, Revolución Nicaragüense or Revolución Popular Sandinista, link=no) encompassed the rising opposition to the Somoza dictatorship in the 1960s and 1970s, the campaign led by the Sandinista National Liberation F ...

Óscar Romero Óscar Arnulfo Romero y Galdámez (15 August 1917 – 24 March 1980) was a prelate of the Catholic Church in El Salvador. He served as Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of San Salvador, the Titular Bishop of Tambeae, as Bishop of Santiago ...

, and the

Guatemalan civil war The Guatemalan Civil War was a civil war in Guatemala fought from 1960 to 1996 between the government of Guatemala and various leftist rebel groups. The government forces have been condemned for committing genocide against the Maya population of ...

. This culminated in the addition of twenty-seven murals during the summer of 1985, funded in part by a grant of $2,500 from the Zellerbach Foundation. This art project proved influential, inspiring the La Lucha Continua Art Park/La Lucha Mural Park in New York City the following year. Painting continues regularly in the alley, including new murals about gentrification and police harassment in 2012 and a restoration of one of the PLACA murals in 2014. Besides those listed above, artists who have produced murals in the alley include

Juana Alicia Juana Alicia (born 1953) is an American muralist, printmaker, educator, activist and, painter. She has been an educator for forty years. Juana Alicia, as part of the faculty Berkeley City College, founded and directed the True Colors Public Art p ...

, Susan Kelk Cervantes, Marta Ayala, Brooke Francher, Miranda Bergman, Osha Neuman, Neil Mackinnon, Carlos Loarca, Xochitl Nevel-Guerrero, and

Sirron Norris Sirron Norris is an American illustrator, muralist, and arts educator. He is known for his work on the FOX animated television show ''Bob's Burgers'' and for numerous cartoon-style public murals, including ones at Balmy Alley, Clarion Alley, and ...

Influence

The Balmy Alley murals have been described, along with San Diego's Chicano Park and Los Angeles'

Estrada Courts Estrada Courts is a low-income housing project in the Boyle Heights area of Los Angeles, California. It is located between E. Olympic Blvd. on the south and E. 8th St. on the north, and S. Lorena St. on the east and S. Grande Vista Ave. on the w ...

, as a leading example of mural environments that reclaim spaces for

Chicanos Chicano or Chicana is a chosen identity for many Mexican Americans in the United States. The label ''Chicano'' is sometimes used interchangeably with ''Mexican American'', although the terms have different meanings. While Mexican-American iden ...

and give expression to a history of Chicano displacement and marginalization. The mural grouping in the alley is internationally recognized, both as an exemplar of activist art and as a tourist destination.

Context

The

Mission District The Mission District (Spanish: ''Distrito de la Misión''), commonly known as The Mission (Spanish: ''La Misión''), is a neighborhood in San Francisco, California. One of the oldest neighborhoods in San Francisco, the Mission District's name is ...

has San Francisco's densest concentration of murals, often along political themes, sometimes described jointly as the "Mission School" of muralism. Balmy Alley is often cited as the leading concentration within the Mission. Nearby

Clarion Alley Clarion Alley is a small street in San Francisco between Mission and Valencia Streets and 17th and 18th Streets, notable for the murals painted by the Clarion Alley Mural Project. History Originally called "Cedar Lane," the alley's name was chan ...

, another mural grouping by local artists, was inspired by Balmy Alley.

History

Influence

Context

See also