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[[upper margin]] Express News, Sunday, June 30, 1991 [[/upper margin]]

The filmmakers combed Los Angeles looking for an unknown Latino artist whose work evokes a feeling of the barrio, but didn't find one until the movie's production designer, Bruno Rubeo, happened to see Hernandez's work in the windows of Jansen-Perez while scouting locations in San Antonio.

Though he decided that S.A. didn't look anything like L.A., Rubeo thought Hernandez's paintings did have the right look.

"What was astounding about Adan's work was that it had all the elements of Southern California's geography - fires in the hills and palm trees," said Hackford, the writer and director of "An Officer and a Gentleman" and co-producer of "La Bamba."

Hackford also told the Los Angeles Times that "the art scene is so developed here that many (of the artists) have already been discovered."

Sadly, San Antonio doesn't have that problem.

Naturally, the prices of Hernandez's paintings have skyrocketed. His painting "La Media Luna" (Half Moon), showing a pachuco cupping his hands around a cigarette against a windblown nightscape, went unsold for years in San Antonio even though it was priced under $4,000.

But the painting was eventually sold t a Californian collector for a five-figure price and is now on the market in Los Angeles with an asking price more than $100,000. 

Not bad for the son of migrant laborers, who graduated from Edgewood High School and studied art at San Antonio College.

The San Antonio Convention and Visitors Bureau is also using one of Hernandez's paintings, "Hay un Rio," showing a conjunto musician playing an accordion, for a billboard advertising the city as a film location. The billboard is set up on Sunset Boulevard and tries to create the image of San Antonio as "a film noir city."

Struggling artist
As a struggling artist, Hernandez painted in a spare bedroom with a barrier across the doorway to keep his children out of his paints. He liked old detective movies, and he liked painting at night. He spent 10 years painting signs before he was able to become a full-time artist. He had his first one-man show at the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center in 1985.

"Adan Hernandez has burst onto the scene at just the right moment," said Jacinto Quirarte, the city's most influential art historian.

"Just like Henry Cisneros, he's in the right place at the right time. His work deals very directly and honestly with life in the barrio. Many other artists are desperately trying to express their experiences in the barrio, but Adan is clearly one of the best.

"When I first saw (Hernandez's) work, I thought this guy is really good. The same kind of chill went through my body that I felt when I first saw the work of Luis Jimenez (of El Paso). Just like Luis, I think Adan will become well known nationally."

Jimenez, whose father operated an automobile body show, become famous during the pop art period  for his fiber glass sculptures, such as the vaquero astride a bucking bronco that greets visitors to "Mexico: Splendors of 30 Centuries" at the San Antonio Museum of Art.

But Hernandez' success would not be possible without the early efforts by San Antonio artists such as Mel Casas, who retired last year as head of SAC's art department, and Cesar Martinez, who was recently profiled by the PBS series "heritage" in a program about the Chicano art movement.

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Casas, who has been living in Italy, and Martinez will have a show opening July 11 at Jansen-Perez, 175 E. Houston St. They were leaders of the Chicano art movement in San Antonio during the 1970s; in groups such as "Pintores de la Nueva Raza" (Painters of the New People) and "Con Safo" (barrio slang meaning free from a bad situation).

"Adan Hernandez has burst onto the scene at just the right moment. Just like Henry Cisneros, he's in the right place at the right time. His work deals very directly and honestly with life in the barrio. Many other artists are desperately trying to express their experiences in the barrio, but Adan is clearly one of the best."  - Jacinto Quirarte, art historian

Quirarte said he hopes to include Hernandez, Casas and Martinez in an exhibit he is helping curate for the Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum in Chicago called "Art of the Other Mexica," which is likely to tour  the country.

"There is a great deal more interest in Latin America art all around the country. There have been all kinds of blockbuster exhibits in the past 10 or 15 years," Quirarte said.

"In San Antonio, one of the most influential exhibits was in 1977 when 'Ancient Roots/New Visions,' a survey of Chicano artists curated by Marc Zuver, was exhibited at the Witte Museum. It was the first time that local artists such as Mel Casas had their work displayed in the local museums."

Quirarte is director of the Research Center for the Visual Arts at UTSA and wrote about Diego panic art, including the introductory essay for the catalog for the "Tejanos" exhibit that opens Tuesday.

Among the "Tejanos" are three artists, Quintin Gonzalez, Ito Romo and Andy Villarreal, whose work was presented as a gift by former Mayor Lila Cockrell to the visiting President of Mexico Carlos Salinas de Gortari, while he was here for the opening of "Splendors."

Also, there's Jesse Amado, who is becoming known as the "Back draft" artist. A fireman by day, he is benefitting from the publicity surrounding the Ron Howard film, but even without it, he's getting plenty of attention for his found-object sculptures. He's bad exhibits recently at the Blue Star Art Space and the Southwest Craft Center.

Other "Tejanos" are Rolando Briseno, Simon Guss Garcia, Carmen Lomas Garza, Alberto Mijangos, Felipe Reyes, Jose Luis Rivera, Roland Rodriguez and Jesse Trevino. Quirarte is also working with Kathy Vargas and Pedro Rodriguez of the Guadalupe arts center, along with two curators from Mexico City Alberto Hijar and Esperanza Gerrido Reyes, on an exhibit examining the Chicano influence on Mexican art that will go on display July 12 at the Mexican Cultural Institute in HemisFair Park.

Free symposium
An all-day, free symposium on July 13 at the Guadalupe will examine how Chicano artists, who often had a difficult time showing their work in Mexico, influencing a whole new generation of Mexican painters who emerged in the 1980s.

[[right margin]] The exhibit will feature four artists from San Antonio - David Casas, Diana Cardenas, Cesar Martinez, and Jose Luis Rivera. The other Texas artist is Luis Jimenez and there will be five artists from California. [[//right margin]]