Born Fort Worth, TX 1955, Delilah Montoya graduated from Metropolitan Technical College in Omaha in 1978 and went on to study photography at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, where she received her BA in 1984, her MA in 1990, and her MFA in 1994. Since completing her MFA, Montoya has been a visiting professor at California State University, Los Angeles. She incorporates printmaking, painting, and drawing techniques into her photography and photographic installations. Her work, as she notes, “makes a statement about being a Chicana in Occupied America and articulates the Chicana experience in the United States.” In recent work she has utilized the topography of Aztlan to explore Western tourism and, in turn, her own identity as an outsider in Western civilization. Montoya lives in Los Angeles and Albuquerque.
Cover Photo Caption: Delilah Montoya, “Smile Now, Cry Later,” 2008.
Their work is now on view at the San Antonio Museum of Art. Lovers & Fighters: Prints by Latino Artists in the SAMA Collection highlights works featuring imagery and subjects related to concepts of love, power, and struggle.
Romantic couples, heart motifs, boxers, and wrestlers evoke “lovers” and “fighters” and serve as points of departure to explore these seemingly opposing concepts. However, the prints on view reframe and expand upon those subjects, offering nuanced interpretations of emotions that go beyond stereotypes of romance and violence.
The focus on printmaking also demonstrates the medium’s influence in Latino art history—from politically engaged works produced at the Taller de Gráfica Popular printmaking collective in 1940s Mexico City to Chicano activism in America during the ’60s and ’70s and today’s community-based studios, including Self Help Graphics in Los Angeles and Coronado Studio in Austin. The medium’s capacity to produce multiple prints enables accessibility to a broad audience while its ability to capture bold, graphic imagery provides a resounding platform for the artist’s voice.
