Amado Maurilio Peña Jr. (born 1943) is an American visual artist and art educator of Mexican and

Yaqui The Yaqui, Hiaki, or Yoeme, are an Indigenous people of Mexico and Native Americans in the United States, Native American tribe, who speak the Yaqui language, a Uto-Aztecan language. Their primary homelands are in Río Yaqui valley in the no ...

ancestry. He is known as an important

Mexican American Mexican Americans are Americans of full or partial Mexico, Mexican descent. In 2022, Mexican Americans comprised 11.2% of the US population and 58.9% of all Hispanic and Latino Americans. In 2019, 71% of Mexican Americans were born in the Unite ...

artist who emerged from the historical

Chicano Movement The Chicano Movement, also referred to as El Movimiento (Spanish for "the Movement"), was a civil rights movements, social and political movement in the United States that worked to embrace a Chicano, Chicano identity and worldview that combated ...

. He works primarily in

printmaking Printmaking is the process of creating work of art, artworks by printing, normally on paper, but also on fabric, wood, metal, and other surfaces. "Traditional printmaking" normally covers only the process of creating prints using a hand proces ...

. His artwork was featured in the important exhibition Chicano Art: Resistance and Affirmation.

Biography

Amado M. Peña Jr. was born in the

border town A border town is a town or city close to the boundary between two countries, states, or regions. Usually the term implies that the nearness to the border is one of the things the place is most famous for. With close proximities to a different coun ...

Laredo, Texas Laredo ( ; ) is a city in the U.S. state of Texas and the county seat of Webb County, Texas, Webb County, on the north bank of the Rio Grande in South Texas, across from Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, Mexico. Founded in 1755, Laredo grew from a villag ...

, in 1943. He received bachelor's and master's degrees in art and education at

Texas A&M University-Kingsville Texas ( , ; or ) is the most populous state in the South Central region of the United States. It borders Louisiana to the east, Arkansas to the northeast, Oklahoma to the north, New Mexico to the west, and has an international border wit ...

. He has taught art at various Texas schools in Laredo, Crystal City, and

Austin Austin refers to: Common meanings * Austin, Texas, United States, a city * Austin (given name), a list of people and fictional characters * Austin (surname), a list of people and fictional characters * Austin Motor Company, a British car manufac ...

. Peña refers to himself as

Mestizo ( , ; fem. , literally 'mixed person') is a term primarily used to denote people of mixed European and Indigenous ancestry in the former Spanish Empire. In certain regions such as Latin America, it may also refer to people who are culturall ...

due to his mixed Mexican and

ancestry, a fact that informs his artistic practice. He is a member and recognized as an

artisan An artisan (from , ) is a skilled craft worker who makes or creates material objects partly or entirely by hand. These objects may be functional or strictly decorative, for example furniture, decorative art, sculpture, clothing, food ite ...

in the

Pascua Yaqui Tribe of Arizona The Pascua Yaqui Tribe of Arizona is a federally recognized tribe of Yaqui Native Americans in the state of Arizona. Descended from the Yaqui people whose original homelands include the Yaqui River valley in western Sonora, Mexico and souther ...

Art

Growing up with a

working class The working class is a subset of employees who are compensated with wage or salary-based contracts, whose exact membership varies from definition to definition. Members of the working class rely primarily upon earnings from wage labour. Most c ...

family in a

, Amado M. Peña Jr. witnessed firsthand the conditions that led to the

. In the 1970s, Texas-based Chicano artist and educator Mel Casas inspired Peña and others of his generation to create art aimed at documenting

culture and life. It was at this moment that Peña became involved in the Chicano Movement. He also began to learn more about the

indigenous Indigenous may refer to: *Indigenous peoples *Indigenous (ecology) In biogeography, a native species is indigenous to a given region or ecosystem if its presence in that region is the result of only local natural evolution (though often populari ...

side of his family. Indigenous painter Jose Encarnacion Peña was also a mentor to Amado M. Peña Jr. Peña was featured in the 1990-1993 exhibition Chicano Art: Resistance and Affirmation that traveled to ten major cities in the United States. The exhibition was the most extensive and widely seen show of

Chicano art The Chicano Art Movement represents groundbreaking movements by Mexican-American artists to establish a unique artistic identity in the United States. Much of the art and the artists creating Chicano Art were heavily influenced by Chicano Movement ...

to date and introduced the artists involved to wider audiences. Peña's art can be seen in the

United States Department of State The United States Department of State (DOS), or simply the State Department, is an United States federal executive departments, executive department of the U.S. federal government responsible for the country's foreign policy of the United State ...

s Art in Embassies Collection and the

Smithsonian American Art Museum The Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM; formerly the National Museum of American Art) is a museum in Washington, D.C., part of the Smithsonian Institution. Together with its branch museum, the Renwick Gallery, SAAM holds one of the world's lar ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Pena, Amado M. Jr. 21st-century American artists 20th-century American artists 1943 births Living people