Tag: Crocker Art Museum

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Scene: A gallery talk; Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, CA; March 22, 2026.

Somebody asks Royal Chicano Air Force founding member Rudy Cuellar at what point did the RCAF’s work “go viral” – when did he feel the art world considered what they had done important?

“Right now,” he responds, “with this show. That’s just happening now.”

The show is Rebels with La Causa: Royal Chicano Air Force Art and Activism 1970-1990, at the Crocker through June 28.

The Royal Chicano Air Force was/is a politically-, culturally-, socially-, educationally-minded artist collective that has its origins at the late-1960s Sacramento State College campus.1 By the early ’70s, the RCAF was an organized group with its own event space and non-profit status. As part of the burgeoning Chicano Movement, its members worked to further the interests of their community, using a multi-disciplinary artistic approach to do so.

Although I don’t recall the circumstances in which I became aware of the RCAF, I do remember Jean Roach, one of my high school art teachers, informing me about the newly-painted downtown-parking-garage butterfly mural, so my knowledge of the group’s existence likely came through her. As she was aware of my interest in the elegant Viennese Secession posters, the severe Russian Constructivist posters, the psychedelic Fillmore Auditorium posters – I didn’t have any hierarchical prejudice against the form – she also told me about the political posters the RCAF made. In retrospect, she probably sensed that inside that lower-middle-class suburban kid beat a budding socially-conscious rebel heart that she wanted to help cultivate.2

About ten years later, in the early 1990s, I met Rudy Cuellar when we were both donating our time and services to Chalk it Up to Sacramento, a local non-profit that provides funding for children’s art education.3 After the festival moved to Fremont Park in 1993, for years Cuellar drew the large square at the northwest corner of the block and his piece, usually a portrait with text forming a border – not unlike a poster design – was always one of the event highlights for me. During this time, he was also screening T-shirts for Archival Framing, where I showed my work; it was through these avenues that we got to know one another, and how I learned of his RCAF history.4

Rebels with La Causa consists primarily of the silkscreened posters, several of which are in the collection of the Smithsonian Institution, toward which Jean Roach guided me. They were used to announce a myriad of events – United Farm Worker rallies,5 Cinco de Mayo celebrations, community dances, benefits, educational conferences, art shows. This was truly art for the people, art that spread its specific message in a literal, text-based manner while using a visual vocabulary with which the audience would be largely familiar – imagery from Aztec relief sculpture, pyramids, the United Farm Workers eagle, zoot suits, and lowriders all appear and re-appear throughout the exhibition.

Rodolfo "Rudy" O. Cuellar: Xicano Bicentenial 1776-1976 (1976). Screenprint on paper, 22 3/4" x 16 3/4".

One of the highlights of the show is Cuellar’s Xicano Bicentenial 1776-1976, a black and red screenprint on white paper in which a face, gagged by a tightly-pulled chain with a lock inscribed with the legend “Made in USA,” stares out at the viewer. His eyes are witness to those two hundred years of horror; the stark treatment of the face stands in bold contrast to the swirling, painterly background. The frightening immediacy of the image speaks to not only the Chicana/o community’s struggles, but to those of all marginalized groups.

Be advised the Crocker has given Rebels with La Causa the respect it deserves, with an extensive program of related events in conjunction with La Raza Galeria Posada and other local organizations.6 Rebels with La Causa is not only an art exhibition, it is the story of a group of people who worked not only for the betterment of their own community, but for the betterment of the people. We the people.

Royal Chicano Air Force, I salute you.

 

1 Sacramento State College became California State University, Sacramento in 1972.

2 She recruited me to design and screen T-shirts for Ground Zero Week, an on-campus program that was part of a nationwide series of events designed to raise awareness of nuclear proliferation and its threat. I responded with a conflation of mod and punk motifs – a target with ransom-note-style text. Reference was important to me, even then.

3 The first year I participated in Chalk it Up, it was a fundraiser for La Raza Galeria Posada, a local bookstore/art gallery founded by members of the RCAF.

4 Cuellar is the only original member of the group I know; I’ve met Louie “the Foot” Gonzalez a couple times and used to see others around town, but never had any interactions with them, as far as I can remember. Sadly, many of them, including artist/poet/musician José Montoya and artist/musician Esteban Villa, the two Sacramento State College faculty members around whom the group was formed, have passed away – Rebels with La Causa includes an ofrenda, an altar honoring those members.

5 The RCAF worked closely with the UFW; Louie “the Foot” Gonzalez said in addition to making posters, members also served as bodyguards and worked crowd control. Although they were inexperienced and untrained, they managed to perform these tasks without ever having an Altamontesque incident.

The recent disturbing news about César Chávez broke a few weeks into Rebels with La Cause’s run. It was a painful reminder that power is relative, and the corruption of power occurs at all levels.

6 There is also a beautiful exhibition catalogue, Rebels with La Causa: Royal Chicano Air Force Art and Activism 1970-1990 (Crocker Art Museum/Scala Arts Publishers, Inc., 2026).

 

Recommended Viewing: Steve LaRosa (Director): Pilots of Aztlán: Flight of the Royal Chicano Air Force documentary (PBS KVIE, 1994).

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Back in February 2020, I wrote about Wayne Thiebaud and the show 100: Paintings, Prints, and Drawings, which was due to open at the Crocker Art Museum in October of that year. Because of the pandemic, the museum was closed for part of the scheduled run, so the exhibition probably didn’t turn out to be the 100th birthday celebration Thiebaud was hoping for and deserved. During the time one could view the show, I was still sheltering-in-place, and did not venture there. Thiebaud passed away in late 2021, and now, after stops in Toledo, OH; Memphis, TN; San Antonio, TX; and Chadds Ford, PA, the show is back in Sacramento, expanded and under the new moniker Wayne Thiebaud: A Celebration, 1920-2021.

Over the years, I’ve been to several surveys of Thiebaud’s work, but on a recent warm, blustery Saturday, I paid a visit to the Crocker to see what I missed out on nearly two years ago. I’d seen much of the work in previous shows or in the Crocker’s permanent collection, although a good portion of the pieces were new to me. Unfortunately, because of the wind, the surrounding agricultural fields, the fact that Sacramento is in a valley, and my overly-vigilant, histamine-releasing immune system, I was sneezing so much I had a hard time focusing on the work. I spent about an hour and a half in the galleries before I gave up, went home with red eyes and a runny nose, and crashed on the sofa with a box of tissue.

My second excursion to the show was much less allergen-infused and much more enjoyable. Thiebaud’s work is playful and fun; a less angst-ridden notable oeuvre would be difficult to cite.1 His technique of applying the paint to physically mimic the subject, whether it be cake frosting, ice cream, mustard, or potato salad, is signature Thiebaud, consummate and humorous. Of his paintings, I have a preference for the still lifes, not only the food, but the clothes, the makeup, the tools – objects which are designed to be adornments to or extensions of the human form but are presented in unused states.

It’s simple enough to understand why in the early 1960s, given Thiebaud’s subject matter, he was seen as a Pop artist. However, although his serial pies, cakes, and other foods were certainly related to that movement, time has proven him to be a much more traditional painter than that connection would indicate. As early as the mid-’60s, he tried to get away from the Pop label by painting the figure, which he approached in much the same manner as the still lifes – brightly lit, straightforward depictions in austere settings. His figurative work is most compelling when it most resembles the still lifes, when the figures are static, doing absolutely nothing, engaging with no one.2

In the late 1960s and early ’70s, Thiebaud added landscapes, both rural and urban, to his oeuvre. These paintings were often constructed from multiple viewpoints and contain all the movement missing from his figurative work. People rarely appear, and when they do, they are miniscule. As in Asian landscape painting, with which many of the cityscapes share an exaggeration of verticality, the figures shown illustrate the disparity in size and importance between humans and their environment.

As much as I enjoy the paintings, I have had fairly consistent access to them, courtesy of the Crocker, for most of my life. With the exception of the relatively recent “Clown” series, of which I don’t recall ever previously seeing an example, they no longer hold much surprise for me. Consequently, the highlights of the show were the ink and the watercolor thumbnails – simple sketchbook exercises which show Thiebaud’s ability to quickly capture the essence of an object or the attitude of a figure.

I’ve said before that Thiebaud was almost certainly the first contemporary artist of whom I was aware. I told him that once, and he laughed, as though he didn’t think of himself as particularly “contemporary.” I didn’t know him, although over the years I did have several interactions with him in non-art-related circumstances, and he always seemed like a genuinely nice, low-key person. Godspeed, Wayne Thiebaud.

 

1 My taste, although quite catholic, veers toward the Expressionist. “Playful and fun” generally does not describe what I look for in a painting.

2 A Thiebaud canvas which I saw for the first time on my second trip to see A Celebration was Supine Woman (1963), which was included in a separate exhibition, Twinka Thiebaud and the Art of the Pose. It could be my favorite Thiebaud figure painting I’ve ever seen.

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Corey Oada standing in front of Wayne Thiebaud's Water City mural
With Wayne Thiebaud’s Water City mosaic (1959) at SMUD Headquarters building, Sacramento (2020).

Wayne Thiebaud was almost certainly the first contemporary artist of whom I was aware. I was four or five years old when my mother brought me to the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) headquarters to show me the building’s exterior mosaic, which depicts the city’s skyline and its reflection in the river. I imagine we made the excursion because my mother knew that even at that young age, all I wanted to do was draw and look at art. The experience must have made an impression, because I not only remember her telling me that the artist lived nearby, but also that the tiles came all the way from Italy.

In the late 1950s, when Thiebaud was commissioned by some savvy individual to do the mural, he was teaching at Sacramento City College. Ten years later, when I saw it for the first time, he was at UC Davis and a famous artist. By the late ’70s/early ’80s, when I was a teenager, I had become fairly well-versed in his career and as a young adult, I saw large shows of his work in Sacramento and San Francisco. I must admit it was a bit of a thrill when he attended the reception for one of my early shows. I didn’t see him, but as the evening was winding down, the gallery owner excitedly showed me the guestbook, and there was his name, alongside his signature heart.

To commemorate Thiebaud’s 100th birthday, the Crocker Art Museum will be presenting a show titled Wayne Thiebaud 100: Paintings, Prints, and Drawings, which opens in October. It’ll be an opportunity to view a good representative sample of his work, much of it apparently previously unseen, together in one space. I wish my five-year-old self were here to see it. I’m sure my current self will enjoy it, as well.