ChimMaya Gallery

Sunday, June 29th

Summer 2008 Art & Lecture Series

GEORGE YEPES

Gallery Talk, Lecture Slideshow, New Works

3:00 – 4:00 Posters, Greeting Cards, Candles…Signing

4:00 – 5:00 Slide show, Lecture (20 year retrospective)

5:00 – 6:00 Questions

The Gallery ChimMaya Summer 2008 Arts and Lecture Series begins with a lecture/slide show presentation by George Yepes on Sunday, June 29th.

Considered to be one of the more prolific painters in the Chicano Mural Movement of the late 70’s, Yepes gained his early reputation as a ferocious painter when he painted with notables Carlos Almaraz, Frank Romero, and Gilbert ‘Magu’ Lujan. He then became a partner in the mural group ‘East Los Streetscapers’ from 1979 to 1985 until he decided that group painting wasn’t suited to his temperament or pace. With grand scale and furious momentum Yepes has painted over 800,000 square feet of social, historical, and sacred images onto the facades of everything from churches, hospitals and freeway overpasses to album covers. He has exhibited in 12 solo and 45 group shows at venues that have included the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Sitges-Barcelona Olympics Exhibit. He has designed more than 30 public murals as well as an album cover for Los Lobos, a Grammy Award-winning music group from East Los Angeles. Yepes’ work can be seen in the current LACMA exhibition, ‘Los Angelenos’ Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the traveling exhibiton ‘Chicano Visions: American Painters on the Verge,’ from the Cheech Marin collection.

Yepes established the Academia de Arte Yepes, the first free mural academy for young students in Los Angeles. The 21 murals his Academia de Arte Yepes students have painted are landmarks. Yepes has taught nearly 1500 low-income students over the last decade through the Academia.