Smithsonian Archives of American Art

 
Quirarte, Jacinto (b. 1931)
Oral history interview with Jacinto Quirarte, 1996 Aug. 15-16

An interview of Jacinto Quirarte conducted by Paul Karlstrom for the Archives of American Art.

Quirarte discusses his professional and personal experience both as a Mexican-American growing up in the Southwest and in California, and as an art historian who was among the first to identify and study the Chicano art movement. He describes his family background, his attraction to figurative art as a student at San Francisco State University, his interest in Mexican muralists, and his fascination with pre-Columbian art which became his speciality. He further discusses his career in Latin America, particularly from the standpoint of multiculturalism and regionalism in his native country; the problem of overlapping political/cultural entities and the connection between pre-Columbian and Chicano situation; the notions of group identity, and shift from universalism to individual identity as part of the Chicano art evolution.