Jos Montoya, Untitled, date unknown. Ink on paper. 29 x 15.5 cm. Courtesy of the Montoya Family Trust.
Jos Montoya (1932-2013) captured the sentiments and struggles of the Chicano movement through his work as a poet, artist, educator and activist. A key figure of the movement, Montoya's writings and drawings depicted zoot suiters, campesinos, pachucos and pachucas, revolutionaries, and everyday people that share Chicano history.
Currently on view at the Fowler Museum, exhibition Jos Montoya's Abundant Harvest: Works on Paper/Works on Life presents over 2,000 works. Co-curated by his son Richard Montoya -- actor, director and playwright -- and Selene Preciado, the restrospective examines the legacy of the prolific artist.
In the essay below, Richard reflects on his father's creative process, his work in the fields and his last moments on this earth.
Being around my father's works for the last two years has taught me a great many things, chief among them is that the man, the artist, the teacher keeps teaching long after he has departed this physical world and that he was very present in the room where we curated, where my objectivity was challenged daily -- and rightfully so because I have none! Jos was not sentimental in the execution of these drawings, and neither should we be in presenting and writing about them.
The sheer number of his drawings -- their epic scale -- defies imagination. When and how did he capture this sea of humanity? The cantinas, the labor camps and fields, the churches, the union halls, the barrio streets, corridors of power, and academia, all called him, but so did more than one movement, a fiery national poetry scene and a man named Cesar, plus a large family with many mouths to feed!
When did he have time to create the portraits of so many? Framing their moment with as few lines as a Beat poet? Perhaps part of the riddle is locked in the economy of his line. He was moving, and so his pen and pencil were as well! There is as much an existential question in these works as there is simplicity and beauty. Jos was so committed to being On the Road that when he and his compadre Esteban Villa went to the corner for a six-pack, they came back two months later from a cross-country trip that included a sojourn in NYC. Playing their guitarras the entire way!
Jos Montoya, Untitled, date unknown. Paint on paper. 89 x 58.5 cm. Courtesy of the Montoya Family Trust.
And no! That's not just one pachuca, there are hundreds, not one sailor but fleets of them on the Pacific, not one pachuco but several barrios of them, not one se ora but everyone one he could capture in the improbable time he had or would allow himself for each drawing. The scampering derelict dog in the barrio or a barfly sitting on a stool for mere minutes -- the artist as chronicler recording his subject's very existence as well as his own.
In looking at these drawing I try to guess where he was at that given time. Where was he existing? Like a Chicano Buddha in the corner, observing all, watching all quietly. Co-curating Abundant Harvest was akin to a true detective story, a kind of forensic poetics where the subject is your father. Complex stuff. Looking for family and one's own self in the work. The magic begins when you stop looking.
Paradoxes: The public man whose very public life was about being at the center of many great Chicano moments. They could be chaotic times, yet his lens was astonishingly selfless. Still. Calm. His steady hand, his drawing was very intimate, almost private, yet carried out in large public spaces.
Jos Montoya, Untitled, date unknown. Ink on paper. 24 x 13 cm. Courtesy of the Montoya Family Trust.
--
--
The biggest lesson perhaps is that there is little objectification here. He never objectified his subject. The women are not dolled up, there is color and there is some erotica, oh yes: a clitoris or two this son could not recognize! The artist as voyeur who does not intrude, he allows a respectful distance and understanding of his subject. There is another important lesson of blue-collar discipline at work here. Following the Dust Bowl and post-war America, one had to work! Jos 's skill is honed, no shortcuts, no iPhone applications, just drawing after drawing, row after row, grape tray after tray, church pew after pew. Repetition yes, yet these are not studies nor are they doodlings.
Echoes of a Catholicism perhaps born in those small wooden, valley churches he wrote poems about, Irish Priest Chicano Sinners. Less a religious zeal than a knowing of the dogged toil of working mile after mile of vineyard row -- a discipline he marvelled at while admitting that, unlike the rest of his family, he was a lackluster farmworker!
Heartbreaking. Breathtaking. The artist noting and telling the world of his field-hand shortcomings at the precise moment his skill and discipline as an artist are taking root and blossoming. That he didn't see his art making or writing as privilege or a higher calling gives the man great irony, warm humor, and a Steinbeck-like affinity for humanity.
Out of all these reasons, lessons, and paradoxes, the idea of the grape tray and fruit box as bearer and protector of his works was born. His family may have had the ability to pick five hundred trays a day, quinienteros! But as Jos tenderly notes in his epic poem below, the life of the iridescent worm under the shade and protection of the grape-leaf world was more important to him. And under his watch, they were safe, and in this shade and improbable safe space, the twin seeds of artist and poet were beautifully and deeply planted.
Jos Montoya, Untitled, date unknown. Ink on paper. 23 x 8 cm. Courtesy of the Montoya Family Trust.
Resonant Valley
When I was
Young among
The pregnant
Vineyards of
All the un-domed
Capitals of
T
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Jos Montoya, Untitled, date unknown. Ink on paper. 29 x 15.5 cm. Courtesy of the Montoya Family Trust. 
