Previous Spotlights
Estrada Courts
The murals below, We Are Not a Minority (Mario Torero & C.A.C.A, 1978) and Give Me Life (Charles W. “Cat” Felix with Los Ninos del Mundo, 1973), are two examples of a remarkable cluster of more than 50 murals at the federally subsidized housing project Estrada Courts on East Olympic Boulevard and South Lorena Street in East Los Angeles. The murals were produced by a number of Chicano artists from Los Angeles, San Diego, and Northern California between 1972 and 1978, during the height of the Chicano civil rights and art movements. Several of the most powerful and historically influential murals at the Courts are in poor condition.
Through Rescue Public Murals, conservators Leslie Rainer and Chris Stavroudis of Rainer & Zebala Partners of Venice, California, assessed six Estrada Courts murals. Two of the original muralists participated in the summer 2007 assessment: Norma Montoya, muralist of Innocence, and Mario Torero, muralist of We Are Not A Minority.
Rescue Public Murals is a national effort to bring attention to U.S. public murals, document their unique artistic and historic contributions, and secure the expertise and support to save them. The project has issued a call for information on important outdoor murals that are deteriorating in communities nationwide. These recommendations will help identify endangered murals that will receive assessments in 2007.
Estrada Courts is significant as perhaps the first mural “cluster,” where multiple murals share the same space. This mural program was extremely influential when painted and became a reference point for muralists throughout East Los (a larger Chicano area of Los Angeles, of which East Los Angeles is merely a part). This idea has been repeated in other significant urban mural projects such as Ramona Gardens (Los Angeles), the Minipark and Balmy Alley (San Francisco), the Spaghetti Bowl (El Paso), and Chicano Park (San Diego).
Dealing with a variety of topics and themes—including pre-Columbian cultures, Native American alliances, the dreams and realities of the Courts residents, and community activism and culture—the Estrada Courts murals serve as a paradigm of effective community cultural awareness and action. The murals facing Olympic Boulevard were painted by leading muralists because Olympic is the most important adjacent street, with by far the most traffic. The murals of the interior of the housing project include “Nature Row,” a series of murals depicting animals.
The buildings at Estrada Courts have just been rehabilitated, so the time is right to devote attention to their artistic and cultural significance as well.