Sputnik and the Avenues: The Art of Chaz Bojórquez

Abstract

Charles “Chaz” Bojórquez is recognized internationally for his role in developing a West Coast calligraphic style and an oeuvre of text-based paintings featuring original typographies inspired by the graffiti of the Avenues, his East Los Angeles neighborhood. His dramatic transformation into a graffiti artist who works on canvas rather than on the streets is an established part of the scholarly and popular record. What is largely unknown and revealed by the Archives of American Art’s Bojórquez Papers is that the years leading up to this transition in the artist’s practice were filled with explorations of clouds. The papers document Bojórquez’s “lasting interest in clouds,” expressing his attachment to continuous motion, energy, and contradictory properties. They also highlight his developing belief that art should function as a tool of human communication and cultural empowerment. Consideration of the artist’s early cloud imagery discloses a burgeoning ethos of universalism that would be articulated more fully in his graffiti-based paintings. In these later works, Bojórquez embraced the local aesthetics of the Avenues as a means of connecting with a global audience.