The East Bay arts community is mourning the death of Dan Fontes, the Oakland-born muralist known for decorating his hometown since the 1980s with iconic images of giraffes strolling under I-580, sea turtles swimming on the side of an industrial building and colorful outdoor portraits of famous local places and people.
Dan Fontes “Giraphics” murals were first painted under I-580 near the Harrison exit in Oakland in the 1980s. (Photo courtesy of Dan Fontes)
Fontes’ death from cancer was announced Tuesday by the Pacific Pinball Museum in Alameda, for which Fontes served on the board for many years. Details about the date and location of his death were not immediately available, but longtime friend and colleague John Sheridan revealed on Facebook earlier this week the “heartbreaking” news that Fontes was in hospice care and nearing the end of his life.
While raised near Lake Merritt and proud of his Oakland roots, Fontes had been living in San Rafael with his longtime partner, Julie Lucchesi. In March, she started a GoFundMe campaign to help cover the costs of his hoped-for recovery. Details about a memorial service have not been released.
In an interview, Sheridan said Fontes was a “gentle, soft-spoken” man whose life and work in the East Bay were all about connecting people to one another and to the world they live in. Of course, there were his beloved murals of animals, including “Giraphics,” the lifelike but almost otherworldly giraffes he painted on pillars at the I-580 underpass at Harrison Street and MacArthur Boulevard in Oakland.
“The giraffes and the whales and the zebras and the turtles, they are trying to remind us that we are one with nature, and we can’t exploit it,” Sheridan said. “We need to raise our consciousness and preserve nature.”
Fellow muralist David Burke said he first saw the giraffes while riding in his family’s VW station wagon under I-580 when he was 8 years old. “I remember the magic of seeing that beautiful creature and the way it stopped time for a moment,” Burke said. He said that seeing the murals planted a seed that would shape his future path as an artist.
When he finally met Fontes in 2015, he told him, “I am doing this work because of you.” Over the years, Burke said, he and Fontes would meet and talk about art and life. “He was a thoughtful, generous man who offered his insights freely and without pretense.”
Andrew Johnstone, a fellow painter, and Evan Phillippe, executive director of the Pacific Paintball Museum, agreed that Fontes was generous both as a mentor to art students and other Bay Area artists and as a supporter of arts organizations. “It’s such a loss, a loss for the whole community, for the arts community in the East Bay and in the whole Bay Area,” said Johnstone, who got to know Fontes about 20 years ago.
At the pinball museum, which shared his love of antiques and Americana, Fontes launched its mural program and painted the “bright, cheery” and massive wall art on both sides of the room that greets visitors to the building, Phillippe said.
In the artist’s statement on his website, Fontes wrote about wanting to “make a difference in the world” through work that is driven by his environmental activism, as well as his interest in showcasing diversity, promoting arts in schools and raising people’s awareness about the beauty and history of the Bay Area, particularly Oakland.
A pedestrian walks by a mural depicting a Fourth of July street scene by Bay Area muralist Dan Fontes on Salvio Street in downtown Concord on Feb. 22, 2023. (Dai Sugano/Bay Area News Group)
Oakland artist Dan Fontes poses with two of his pieces — masks of Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden — at his home studio on Oct. 8, 2003. (D. Ross Cameron/ Staff Archives)
Elaine Alvarez, 17, and Kecia Reichel, 16, both of Concord, walk past the Concord Historical Mural by artist Dan Fontes, which graces a wall of the old bank building at 2001 Salvio St., in 1996. The mural is part of the City of Concord Art in Public Places program. (Contra Costa Times/Bob Pepping)
Ed Cassel, at right, and Dan Fontes stand inside one of the Playland themed rooms at the Lander International office building in El Cerrito on March 9, 2005. (Sean Connelley/Tribune Archives)
Local artists Dan Fontes and Ingrid Good create a replica of the “Mona Lisa” to promote the Italian Festival at Jack London Square in Oakland in September 2001. (Ray Chavez/Tribune Archives)
Artist Dan Fontes of San Rafael poses with his artwork in the bathroom of Deb Finney of Alameda on Sunday, Nov. 15, 2009. (Jim Stevens/Bay Area News Group Archives)
Show Caption
1 of 6
A pedestrian walks by a mural depicting a Fourth of July street scene by Bay Area muralist Dan Fontes on Salvio Street in downtown Concord on Feb. 22, 2023. (Dai Sugano/Bay Area News Group)
“I seek a sense of timelessness and resonance in the images I choose to make public,” he said. “I’ve chosen to continue the struggle down an unchartered path to fight blight, sameness and visual bleakness and depressing grayness of the cities within a palette of springtime brightness, color intensity and photographic beauty.”
Fontes was particularly interested in connecting locals to their history — and to his own. He was especially proud of painting a black-and-white, photograph-like mural on Telegraph Avenue, showing 1960s counterculture figures, or the hippies he remembers from his youth, displaying a “Love Not War” sign.
“Since I grew up in the East Bay, I still have strong memories of walking down Telegraph Avenue and seeing all the hippies and goings on,” he wrote. “Later in the 1990s, I’d been caught in two different riots and had this sense of the resistance movement that needed to be reflected in a genuine way.”
Fontes began working as an artist in 1981 after graduating from Cal State East Bay with bachelor’s degrees in both studio and fine art. While he was also an accomplished watercolorist and created privately commissioned works on interior and exterior walls across the West Coast, he became known for his large-scale public artworks in the Bay Area. These included his murals at the Playland-Not-at-the-Beach museum in El Cerrito, which depicted San Francisco’s Sutro Baths, Cliff House and Playland amusement park.
But in one particularly painful situation, Fontes experienced the difficulty of making public art that could always be at risk from damage from the elements — or from people.
One of his most famous large-scale projects was completed in the late 1980s. It was a stunning, 98-foot-long panoramic mural of Lake Merritt, which he painted with puffy white clouds, reflected in shimmering blue water, on the side of the auto dealership at 27th Street and Broadway in Oakland.
A mural depicting Lake Merritt at 27th Street and Broadway in Oakland has been painted over by business owners. (Photo courtesy of Dan Fontes)
To ensure that the painting would be of the highest, longest-lasting quality, he used pricey products imported from a well-known German firm. With the help of the First Presbyterian Church of Oakland, he unveiled the painting in a 1988 dedication ceremony, attended by then-Oakland Mayor Lionel Wilson.
The mural, designed to last 100 years, made it through the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake with only one small crack, according to a 2015 Bay Area News Group story. But it was destroyed in 2013. The initial blow came from taggers who spray-painted graffiti across it.
When the auto dealership was sold, the new owners painted over the damaged mural without giving Fontes the chance to remove or fix it. In 2015, Fontes sued the auto dealer in federal court, with his attorney at the time saying, “It was a deeply loved, widely recognized work of art, and they just came and painted over it like it was nothing,” according to a story by this news organization.
Johnstone knew of other cases where Fontes would go out and fix his murals if they needed a touch-up. “I’d see him out on a ladder fixing his giraffes,” Johnstone said. “To him, the artwork was never done.”
Muralist Dan Fontes takes a break from refurbishing his zebra mural to talk under Interstate 580 on Broadway in Oakland, Calif., on Friday, July 1, 2016. Fontes had originally painted the zebras in 1984 and had not touched them until 2016. He has a crowd funding campaign online to help pay for the refurbishment. (Laura A. Oda/Bay Area News Group)
Dan Fontes paints on a scaffolding under Interstate 580 on Broadway in Oakland, Calif., touching up areas on his zebra murals on Friday, July 1, 2016. (Laura A. Oda/Bay Area News Group)
Dan Fontes paints on a scaffolding under Interstate 580 on Broadway in Oakland, Calif., touching up areas on his zebra murals on Friday, July 1, 2016. (Laura A. Oda/Bay Area News Group)
Show Caption
1 of 3
Muralist Dan Fontes takes a break from refurbishing his zebra mural to talk under Interstate 580 on Broadway in Oakland, Calif., on Friday, July 1, 2016. Fontes had originally painted the zebras in 1984 and had not touched them until 2016. He has a crowd funding campaign online to help pay for the refurbishment. (Laura A. Oda/Bay Area News Group)