Aztlán, "El Plan Espiritual de Aztlán," Large Chicano Poster of Ancestral Homeland and Identity, 1979

Aztlán Chicano Poster

Broadside

"Aztlán" Chicano wall poster, published by Francisco Exotic Deco Inc. in Southern California in 1979, showing how the political language of the Chicano Movement entered popular commercial culture. Ten years earlier, "El Plan Espiritual de Aztlán," adopted at the 1969 National Chicano Youth Liberation Conference in Denver, had transformed Aztlán from the legendary Mexica homeland into a symbol of Chicano ancestry, cultural identity, and connection to the American Southwest. Guerrero’s "Aztlán" belongs to this cultural moment.
Broadside, offset lithographic color print on glossy paper, approximately 17.5 x 23 inches, California, 1979. The image shows a monumental bare chested archer standing astride a mountainous landscape, wearing a large feathered headdress, gold colored ornaments, a broad beaded collar, wrist cuffs, and a patterned loin covering as he draws a bow toward an unseen target. A jeweled woman in abbreviated dress leans against his body below his raised arm, establishing a gendered pairing of armed male protector and dependent female figure rather than an archaeologically specific representation of Mexica dress or ceremony. Beneath them, scores of diminutive figures climb ladders, haul materials, work the slopes, and move across scaffolding surrounding enormous masonry letters spelling "Aztlan." The device makes the homeland itself appear under construction: human labor physically produces the monumental word while the idealized ancestral couple towers above it. The composition joins three recurrent fields of late twentieth century Chicano imagery in a single popular image: imagined pre Columbian ancestry, the heroic male body, and labor as the means by which Aztlán is made material. At lower left, a small automobile emblem appears above the printed word "francisco," followed by "© F.E.D.I. ’79"; "Printed in U.S.A." appears along the lower margin, and the painted image bears the signature of A. Guerrero at lower right. Francisco Exotic Deco Inc., or F.E.D.I., operated from La Puente, California, and produced commercial material tied to Chicano and lowrider visual culture.
Aztlán had a longer Indigenous and Chicano genealogy than the political formulation of 1969. The term derives from the legendary homeland associated with Mexica origins and was adopted by Chicano artists and activists to assert ancestral connection to lands of the American West and Southwest. By the early 1980s, artists including Richard Duardo were joining the name Aztlán to lettering and graphic languages associated with lowrider cars, urban graffiti, and Chicano street culture. Guerrero’s image belongs to that same transformation of Aztlán into visual territory. It also records a contested form of Indigenism, an example of Chicano popular culture which imagined Indigenous ancestry through a romanticized warrior, an eroticized female companion, and monumental stone architecture. Its 1979 date places it at a point when Chicano art was expanding beyond the movement poster into community festivals, magazines, commercial prints, murals, and lowrider culture; "Lowrider" magazine had begun publication in San Jose in 1977 as a specifically Chicano community voice, while the Royal Chicano Air Force was still using Indigenous imagery and public cultural events in Sacramento in 1979. Light surface rubbing, with minor edge and margin wear; colors remain strong and the printed image is substantially intact. Overall in very good condition.

Item #23948

Price: $450.00