Amado Peña Jr. "Mestizo Series: Ellos" 1992 Original Monotype, Signed, Framed

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Mestizo Series: Ellos is a 1992 original monotype by Amado Maurilio Peña Jr., signed and titled in pencil. A monotype … Read more Mestizo Series: Ellos is a 1992 original monotype by Amado Maurilio Peña Jr., signed and titled in pencil. A monotype is pulled from a painted plate and yields a single impression, so this is a one-of-a-kind work, not an edition.

Two figures face each other against a warm peach sky, wrapped in shawls of violet and plum. One wears a dark round-crowned hat; the other's long dark hair falls down the back. Peña built the faces with angular strokes of red-brown and let the violet run into broad fields across the lower half. Loose pencil lines wander over the printed color, and a single yellow line loops across the sky. The fringe of a shawl and a few white highlights sit at the center, where the two figures meet. Ellos is Spanish for they.
The back of the frame carries the label of Peña's Austin studio and gallery at 1221 West Sixth Street. It records the title, medium, inventory number 4861, image size, and 1992 copyright. Beside it is a Peña Studios publicity photo of the artist, inscribed in marker For Sally, Best Wishes, and signed with his full name. Both stay with the piece.

Peña was born in Laredo, Texas, in 1943 and earned bachelor's and master's degrees in art and education at Texas A&I in Kingsville. He taught art in Laredo, Crystal City, and Austin, and in the 1970s he became part of the Chicano art movement. His work was included in Chicano Art: Resistance and Affirmation, which toured ten U.S. cities from 1990 to 1993. It is held by the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the State Department's Art in Embassies collection. He describes himself as Mestizo, of Mexican and Yaqui ancestry, and he is recognized as an Artisan of the Pascua Yaqui Tribe of Arizona. In 2015 the Texas House of Representatives honored him by resolution. Mestizo runs through his whole career: the Smithsonian holds his 1974 screenprint of that name, and he was still adding to the Mestizo Series decades later.
It suits a few kinds of buyers:

Collectors. A collector of Chicano and Southwestern art gets a unique, documented Peña rather than one of his editioned prints.
Texas buyers. A Texas collector gets a piece that came straight out of his Austin studio.

Smaller walls. At 18 by 21 1/2 inches framed, it works in an office, a hallway, or a bedroom, or as the anchor of a gallery wall. The violet and peach palette sits well against warm wood and terracotta. See less