Cecilia Alvarez


Cecilia Alvarez is an American Chicana artist known for her oil paintings and murals depicting themes of feminism, poverty, and environmental degradation in the United States and Latin America. Alvarez's painting Las Cuatas Diego has been featured in books and exhibitions around the world. Alvarez has also illustrated the bilingual children's book Antonio's Card authored by Rigoberto González. Her work is collected by the Mexican Fine Arts Museum, the Seattle Art Museum and by the Kaiser Foundation.

Biography

Alvarez was born in National City, California to a Cuban father and a Mexican mother. She was raised by both of her parents in San Diego, California and Tijuana, Mexico. Her art draws inspiration from her diverse upbringing within a variety of cultural and political settings.
Alvarez is a self-taught artist. Alvarez started studying at San Diego State University, however, she did not complete her education because she felt that it wasn't necessary. She had been told by faculty that because she was a Mexican-American woman, her work would never be considered "fine art." Alvarez began to help her family financially at the age of twenty-three, after leaving college.
In 1975 Alvarez moved to Washington state where she has created the majority of her artwork.
From 1978 to 1981, she attended Eastern Washington University.
She currently resides and works in Seattle, Washington with her husband and two children.

Art

Alvarez is primarily a painter, but she has worked on large public artwork and on helping youth to create murals to raise cultural awareness. Alvarez uses personal imagery in her art in order to critique issues that are politically and culturally important to her. She has stated that she hopes to "create discourse through her art, on issues of entitlement, poverty and who is expendable in our collective." Alvarez attempts to redefine the cultural values assigned to women and the concept of family using her art. Her duality as a woman and Chicana define her art as she states, "how we fit into the universe, telling jokes, music, laying tile, whatever it was that evolved that whole ability to think of our humanity." The recurring use of female images in her work relates to the artists close relationship wither her mother and her aunt, both of whom bestowed upon her the values of family and human connection.
Through her art, she hopes to spark dialogue on the societal importance placed on notions like beauty and power. In 1991, Alvarez gifted a color print of her painting "Las Cuatas Diego" to The Mexican Museum's permanent collection located in San Francisco.

Notable works