“My paintings reflect my intrigue with the notion that, throughout history, pigment has
been applied directly to the body to seduce, wage war, and summon gods, among other
ceremonial functions. The figure is also the ideal form through which to explore my
interest—the dichotomous relationship between men and women. My works are
propaganda banners showcasing the orgiastic relationship between my equally
promiscuous parts—male and female, abstract and gestural, Mexican and American,
intellect and instinct, artisan and artist. If propaganda can be understood as perpetrating
lies, then it must also be understood as resonating some collectively held truth—each sex
is the other’s reflection and fetish, satellized.”
been applied directly to the body to seduce, wage war, and summon gods, among other
ceremonial functions. The figure is also the ideal form through which to explore my
interest—the dichotomous relationship between men and women. My works are
propaganda banners showcasing the orgiastic relationship between my equally
promiscuous parts—male and female, abstract and gestural, Mexican and American,
intellect and instinct, artisan and artist. If propaganda can be understood as perpetrating
lies, then it must also be understood as resonating some collectively held truth—each sex
is the other’s reflection and fetish, satellized.”
“I am the product of the Mexican-U.S. cultural collision,” claims Claudio Dicochea,
who grew up in the raw, unsettled environment of the U.S.-Mexican border. He
recalls that he learned to read Spanish from El Libro Rojo at the same time he was
learning to read English from Mad magazine. He studied drawing and painting at the
University of Arizona in Tucson, where he served as vice president of the Cultural
Diversity in the Visual Arts Organization and supervised the painting of several
murals. While at the university, he studied with Alfred Quiroz (see entry on this
artist) and Robert Colescott, both of whom successfully mixed their creative personal
approaches to art with the academic requirements of art instruction. According to
Dicochea, both artists “fueled my belief that art is entertainment and that the only
reason to paint is to experience the sensual and phenomenological process.” During his
time at the university he was instrumental in establishing the Robert Colescott
Scholarship, with Quiroz as his mentor. Dicochea received his B.F.A., graduating
with honors, in 1995. He then attended the San Francisco Art Institute, where he
received a post baccalaureate degree in painting and drawing in 1998. At the same
time, he continued to develop his body of artwork, which was firmly tied to his
concept of Mexican history as a violent, constantly shifting flux of cultures and
influences. “Similarly,” he said, “my paintings are very much about process: sheathing,
submersion, transparency, and replacement.”
Dicochea is an important voice in an emerging group of artists who came of age in the
post-Chicano movement era. Raised on a steady diet of popular culture and Reagan-
era-cynicism, this new guard demonstrates a versatility and self awareness that
expands, the boundaries of Chicano art. Engrossed by the cultural coagulation in the
borderlands of the United States and Mexico, Dicochea allows the contradiction of
homogenization to exist as truth in his work. The overtly sensual and conflicted
visions applied to his canvasses are informed by his immersion in the pulp victuals of
the border milieu. Unwilling to ignore the tendencies of a mass-produced existence,
Dicochea vigorously plumbs the emotional and self destructive indulgences of the
postmodern United States. The layered constructions of Dicochea’s technique, vital to
his thematic concerns, make him a particularly challenging and invigorating artist to
weigh. The appeal of these works to the anxious and demystified population is rooted
in their acceptance of a negotiated identity. Abandoning traditional reticence,
Dicochea is a coconspirator in the perversion of the social ethos. Nimble and
mischievous, this member of the new guard sends the clear warning that now a
creative Chicano language can exist with no need to explain or justify itself. Utterly
emboldened, Dicochea is the necessary bridge between the profane and the refined, a
revolt against the rigid congeniality of the American suburban mythology.
Propaganda, an unstretched canvas, besieges the fused figure of a bull and a man with
the unsettling intrusion of satellites in tense proximity to the subject. The subject grips
his heart in his hands while a needle clings to his arm. This barter between technology
and instinct, stimulus and emotion, crystallizes the artist’s commentary on the social
condition. A tainted yellow aura mushrooms from the subject; it is expanded and
violated by the relationship to the satellites. Scrawled across this aura is the word
“Propaganda,” unruly and unprovoked. This work suggests the possibility that
propaganda is not restricted to the glossy, well-produced vernacular of advertising.
Visceral and unchecked, this type has the ability to cohabitate with the most
fundamental spaces of its captives.
Asherah is a work that relies on a coalescence of technical approaches and motives.
Dicochea employs both a passive brush stroke and a linear division of the canvas by
paint applied directly from the tube. The title refers to the original female
complement of the Hebrew god Yahweh, Asherah. Ultimately the role of Asherah was
repressed and Yahweh assumed the role of sole deity. This submerged female
influence is reintroduced in this painting. The handcuffed male, along with the
floating, barb-wired underwear, provokes a homoerotic suspense. Dicochea is
carefully explicating the conditions that produced the segregation of the feminine in
men and the isolation of homosexuality as a dislocated condition. This work restores
the ability of the dualistic persona to resolve the conflicts that have been regressively
assigned to it.
Since graduation, Dicochea has served as a painting and art history instructor in the
state of California’s Arts in Corrections program as well as working on several murals
in the Tucson area. He was an invited artist at Self-Help Graphics, Los Angeles, in
1999 and the first place award winner in the Ford Foundation’s Siqueiros-Pollock
Binational Painting Competition in 2000. His group exhibitions have included
Southwestern Expose (Union Gallery, Tucson, 1994), The Figure (Joseph Gross
Gallery, Tucson, 1994), Vision (Joseph Gross Gallery, Tucson, 1995), Cuentos del
Barrio (Tucson Pima Arts Council, 1995), Dia de los Muertos: Contemporary
Offerings (Jose Galvez Gallery, Tucson, 1995), Senior Exhibit (Joseph Gross Gallery,
Tucson, 1995), Cuentos del Barrio II (Tuscon Pima Arts Council, 1997), Raices
Nuevas: Spaces Revisited (Tucson Pima Arts Council, 1997), Post-Baccalaureate Class
(Diego Rivera Gallery, San Francisco, 1998-99), MAS-CARAS (Raices Taller 222,
Tucson, 1999), and Frontera: Ford, Siqueiros-Pollock (Museo de Arte e
Historia/INBA, Juarez, Mexico, 2000-01). He has also mounted two solo exhibitions:
Propaganda (3rd Avenue Gallery, Tucson, 1996), and Constant Pleasure (Pete’s Café,
San Francisco, 1998). (Joaquín Alvarado)
who grew up in the raw, unsettled environment of the U.S.-Mexican border. He
recalls that he learned to read Spanish from El Libro Rojo at the same time he was
learning to read English from Mad magazine. He studied drawing and painting at the
University of Arizona in Tucson, where he served as vice president of the Cultural
Diversity in the Visual Arts Organization and supervised the painting of several
murals. While at the university, he studied with Alfred Quiroz (see entry on this
artist) and Robert Colescott, both of whom successfully mixed their creative personal
approaches to art with the academic requirements of art instruction. According to
Dicochea, both artists “fueled my belief that art is entertainment and that the only
reason to paint is to experience the sensual and phenomenological process.” During his
time at the university he was instrumental in establishing the Robert Colescott
Scholarship, with Quiroz as his mentor. Dicochea received his B.F.A., graduating
with honors, in 1995. He then attended the San Francisco Art Institute, where he
received a post baccalaureate degree in painting and drawing in 1998. At the same
time, he continued to develop his body of artwork, which was firmly tied to his
concept of Mexican history as a violent, constantly shifting flux of cultures and
influences. “Similarly,” he said, “my paintings are very much about process: sheathing,
submersion, transparency, and replacement.”
Dicochea is an important voice in an emerging group of artists who came of age in the
post-Chicano movement era. Raised on a steady diet of popular culture and Reagan-
era-cynicism, this new guard demonstrates a versatility and self awareness that
expands, the boundaries of Chicano art. Engrossed by the cultural coagulation in the
borderlands of the United States and Mexico, Dicochea allows the contradiction of
homogenization to exist as truth in his work. The overtly sensual and conflicted
visions applied to his canvasses are informed by his immersion in the pulp victuals of
the border milieu. Unwilling to ignore the tendencies of a mass-produced existence,
Dicochea vigorously plumbs the emotional and self destructive indulgences of the
postmodern United States. The layered constructions of Dicochea’s technique, vital to
his thematic concerns, make him a particularly challenging and invigorating artist to
weigh. The appeal of these works to the anxious and demystified population is rooted
in their acceptance of a negotiated identity. Abandoning traditional reticence,
Dicochea is a coconspirator in the perversion of the social ethos. Nimble and
mischievous, this member of the new guard sends the clear warning that now a
creative Chicano language can exist with no need to explain or justify itself. Utterly
emboldened, Dicochea is the necessary bridge between the profane and the refined, a
revolt against the rigid congeniality of the American suburban mythology.
Propaganda, an unstretched canvas, besieges the fused figure of a bull and a man with
the unsettling intrusion of satellites in tense proximity to the subject. The subject grips
his heart in his hands while a needle clings to his arm. This barter between technology
and instinct, stimulus and emotion, crystallizes the artist’s commentary on the social
condition. A tainted yellow aura mushrooms from the subject; it is expanded and
violated by the relationship to the satellites. Scrawled across this aura is the word
“Propaganda,” unruly and unprovoked. This work suggests the possibility that
propaganda is not restricted to the glossy, well-produced vernacular of advertising.
Visceral and unchecked, this type has the ability to cohabitate with the most
fundamental spaces of its captives.
Asherah is a work that relies on a coalescence of technical approaches and motives.
Dicochea employs both a passive brush stroke and a linear division of the canvas by
paint applied directly from the tube. The title refers to the original female
complement of the Hebrew god Yahweh, Asherah. Ultimately the role of Asherah was
repressed and Yahweh assumed the role of sole deity. This submerged female
influence is reintroduced in this painting. The handcuffed male, along with the
floating, barb-wired underwear, provokes a homoerotic suspense. Dicochea is
carefully explicating the conditions that produced the segregation of the feminine in
men and the isolation of homosexuality as a dislocated condition. This work restores
the ability of the dualistic persona to resolve the conflicts that have been regressively
assigned to it.
Since graduation, Dicochea has served as a painting and art history instructor in the
state of California’s Arts in Corrections program as well as working on several murals
in the Tucson area. He was an invited artist at Self-Help Graphics, Los Angeles, in
1999 and the first place award winner in the Ford Foundation’s Siqueiros-Pollock
Binational Painting Competition in 2000. His group exhibitions have included
Southwestern Expose (Union Gallery, Tucson, 1994), The Figure (Joseph Gross
Gallery, Tucson, 1994), Vision (Joseph Gross Gallery, Tucson, 1995), Cuentos del
Barrio (Tucson Pima Arts Council, 1995), Dia de los Muertos: Contemporary
Offerings (Jose Galvez Gallery, Tucson, 1995), Senior Exhibit (Joseph Gross Gallery,
Tucson, 1995), Cuentos del Barrio II (Tuscon Pima Arts Council, 1997), Raices
Nuevas: Spaces Revisited (Tucson Pima Arts Council, 1997), Post-Baccalaureate Class
(Diego Rivera Gallery, San Francisco, 1998-99), MAS-CARAS (Raices Taller 222,
Tucson, 1999), and Frontera: Ford, Siqueiros-Pollock (Museo de Arte e
Historia/INBA, Juarez, Mexico, 2000-01). He has also mounted two solo exhibitions:
Propaganda (3rd Avenue Gallery, Tucson, 1996), and Constant Pleasure (Pete’s Café,
San Francisco, 1998). (Joaquín Alvarado)
The statements on this page appear in the following art book:
Contemporary Chicana and Chicano Art :Artists, Works, Culture and
Education
Bilingual Press, Hispanic Research Center, Arizona State University, 2002.
http://latinoartcommunity.org/community/ChicArt/ArtistDir/ClaDic.html
Contemporary Chicana and Chicano Art :Artists, Works, Culture and
Education
Bilingual Press, Hispanic Research Center, Arizona State University, 2002.
http://latinoartcommunity.org/community/ChicArt/ArtistDir/ClaDic.html