Top of page

Ready for Research: Mission Gráfica/La Raza Collection

Share this post:

The following guest post is by Maggie McCready, Archivist in the Prints & Photographs Division.

A collection of nearly 1,200 prints and posters by 265 different artists is now online at the Library of Congress.  This artwork represents 40 years’ worth of culture, printmaking, and protest based in the San Francisco Bay area. Let me introduce you to the studios of the Mission Gráfica and La Raza Graphics!

This autobiographical print demonstrates the hustle and bustle of the La Raza Graphics studio as well as the collaborative spirit it fostered. Artists worked together to illustrate, design, and print posters for local community events and also participated in political conversations at the national and international level. The donor noted that a number of La Raza Graphics “members are recognizable in this piece: Herbert [Siguenza], in the foreground pulling a silkscreen print; Pete Gallegos reading a newspaper; Juan Fuentes (to the left of Pete) discussing business with another member; and then there’s Linda Lucero located in the lower left-hand corner working at the drawing table, compass in hand.”

A Day in the Life. Print by Herbert Siguenza, 1981. https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2022666212/. Used by permission.

Artists like Al Borvice, Oscar Melara, Pete Gallegos, René Castro, and Jos Sances, who founded the La Raza Graphics and Mission Gráfica printshops, fostered a community who sought to address the repeated racism faced by Latina/o Americans in San Francisco in the 1970s and 1980s. What resulted was a thriving print culture in the Bay Area that persists to this day, and has attracted multiple artists from around the world to participate.