{"id":127253,"date":"2026-01-09T23:11:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-09T23:11:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/127253\/"},"modified":"2026-01-09T23:11:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-09T23:11:09","slug":"daughter-of-godfather-of-chicano-art-continues-legacy-at-hilbert-museum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/127253\/","title":{"rendered":"Daughter of ‘Godfather of Chicano Art’ continues legacy at Hilbert Museum"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Artist and author Rosemary Vasquez Tuthill remembers when her father, Emigdio Vasquez, asked her to pose for one of his paintings. She was a teenager and he asked her to remain still and hold a lit cigarette.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was 13 years old and I didn\u2019t understand what he wanted me to do,\u201d Vasquez Tuthill said. \u201cHe said \u2018sit like that and don\u2019t move.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Emigdio <\/p>\n

Emigdio Vasquez\u2019s work titled \u201cSaturday Night at Leo\u2019s\u201d features his daughter Rosemary Vasquez Tuthill posing with a cigarette. <\/p>\n

(Sarah Mosqueda)<\/p>\n

That\u2019s how her likeness ended up in \u201cSaturday Night at Leo\u2019s \u201d (1974), an oil panting by her father that depicts a boisterous crowd in a busy bar, including a woman in red with a cigarette in hand.<\/p>\n

Vasquez Tuthill\u2019s father is widely regarded as the \u201cGodfather\u201d of Chicano art and a comprehensive collection of the work that earned him the well-deserved nickname is featured in the Hilbert Museum\u2019s newest exhibition, \u201cEmigdio Vasquez: Retrospective 50.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe took 50 of his most iconic paintings and we borrowed a lot of them,\u201d Vasquez Tuthill said.<\/p>\n

On view through May 30, the exhibit spans the highly regarded muralist and teacher\u2019s career with work from the late 1960s until 2014.<\/p>\n

\"Chicano <\/p>\n

Chicano artist, Emigdio Vasquez, often painted images that honored immigrant labor. <\/p>\n

(Sarah Mosqueda)<\/p>\n

\u201cThe 50 oil paintings range from portraits and still lifes to depictions of Mexican American culture and life in the Orange barrio and trace his evolution as an artist from the expressiveness of the 1960s to the profound social narratives in his later years,\u201d said Mary Platt, Hilbert Museum director.<\/p>\n

Early on, Vasquez painted mostly from his imagination with scenes of Mexican revolutionaries a choice subject, inspired by the stories his own father would tell. One of his first works, \u201cLos Revolutionarios,\u201d which was painted on burlap because he did not have enough money to spend on canvas, is on view for the first time. <\/p>\n

\u201cHe couldn\u2019t afford canvases back then so he took a press board and he got some burlap material and glued it on there to create his own canvas,\u201d Vasquez Tuthill said.<\/p>\n

There are paintings of old cars parked in front of clapboard houses alongside portraits of members of the Latino communities in 1970s Anaheim, Santa Ana and Orange. There are still life paintings of culturally specific items, for example, \u201cBeer and Vegetable Still Life\u201d (1996) features brightly colored tomatoes, chilies and onions on a wooden table, ready to made into salsa. A common theme of labor runs through the work with pachucos, day laborers and field workers all present.<\/p>\n

\"A <\/p>\n

A still life painting from Chicano artist Emigdio Vasquez of ingredients commonly used to make salsa. <\/p>\n

(Sarah Mosqueda)<\/p>\n

Vasquez Tuthill said her father never really spent time outside of Orange County. The intimacy he had with subjects reflects the strong familiarity he had with his local surroundings. Vasquez painted 32 murals in Southern California, including the iconic 1985 Manzanita Park mural titled \u201cTowards the Twenty-First Century\u201d in Anaheim.<\/p>\n

His early work has a rough sense of the photorealistic style he would come to favor, with the work progressing into sharp focus. Later in his career he relied less on his imagination for inspiration and more on the photographs he would take of his community.<\/p>\n

A painting of Santa Ana\u2019s 4th Street titled \u201cLa Calle Cuatro\u201d (2001) is painted from a photograph he took in the 1990s of storefronts along the busy street. One shop window features a \u201cstore hours\u201d sticker that almost looks as if it could be peeled off.<\/p>\n

Hilbert Museum co-founder Mark Hilbert<\/a> has been a longtime collector of Vasquez\u2019s work.Vasquez Tuthill herself spent time working as a docent at the museum.<\/p>\n

The exhibition is one Vasquez Tuthill dreamed of showing for years and the recent expansion<\/a> of the museum, tripling the existing exhibit space, finally made her dream come true.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur 26 galleries give us more opportunity than ever to display the more than 5,000 oils, watercolors, illustrations, drawings, pieces of movie art and other works in the Hilbert Collection,\u201d Platt said.<\/p>\n

A small showing of Vasquez\u2019s work was on view during the museum\u2019s initial reopening, including a still life of a bowl of menudo<\/a>. It garnered attention and a decision was made to move forward with a larger exhibition of his work.<\/p>\n

\"Emigdio <\/p>\n

Emigdio Vasquez\u2019s painting of the former Orange Deli. <\/p>\n

(Sarah Mosqueda)<\/p>\n

\u201cSince there was a lot of public interest in a smaller exhibition of works by the artist last year, we\u2019re excited to be able to host this considerably larger retrospective curated from the collections of Vasquez\u2019s family and other devoted collectors,\u201d Platt said.<\/p>\n

Although Vasquez Tuthill was barely a teenager when she posed for \u201cSaturday Night at Leo\u2019s\u201d her father reimagined her as an older woman, a sort of prediction of how she might look that turned out to be quite accurate.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s how I looked in my twenties,\u201d Vasquez Tuthill said. \u201cHe really nailed it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Artist <\/p>\n

Artist and author Rosemary Vasquez Tuthill, stands with Emigdio Vasquez\u2019s work in which she posed as a model. <\/p>\n

(Sarah Mosqueda)<\/p>\n

Vasquez Tuthill is present in another great work featured in the show, but in a different way. While Vasquez often painted the male workforce, near the end of his life he made an effort to depict female labor, choosing produce packers as the subject of one of his last paintings, \u201cPacking House, Orange CA , circa 1948.\u201d (2014\/2015)<\/p>\n

\u201cThese are his sisters, Bea and Liz,\u201d Vasquez Tuthill said of the line of women in the painting, shown amid packing crates with oranges. \u201cI remember seeing this at his house. It was sketched out, outlined and he had the first layer of paint on it. He had the actual black-and-white photograph on his table.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vasquez fell ill and passed away before he could complete the work. At the behest of her brother, Vasquez Tuthill reluctantly finished what her father had started.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had just started getting back into painting, but I was doing little things,\u201d Vasquez Tuthill recalled. \u201cI talked to my older brother about it and he said \u2018just start with a shoe.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

She did and worked her way up, finishing it in 2015. She entered it in the Orange County Fair and won a prize that year.<\/p>\n

\u201cMark [Hilbert] liked it so much he kept bugging me about it. He wanted me to donate it to the museum and I resisted for a long time,\u201d said Vasquez Tuthill. \u201cI had a real attachment to it because it was like my transition; I was taking up the mantle.\u201d<\/p>\n

\""Packing <\/p>\n

\u201cPacking House, Orange, CA circa 1948\u201d was outlined by Emigdio Vasquez and completed by Rosemary Vasquez Tuthill following her Father\u2019s passing. <\/p>\n

(Sarah Mosqueda)<\/p>\n

Continuing her father\u2019s legacy is a responsibility she takes seriously. Vasquez Tuthill authored a book about his life titled \u201cThe Boy Who Drew the Barrio.\u201d Visitors can find signed copies available for purchase at the museum. Vasquez Tuthill hopes the show and the book will inspire people to learn more the impact her father had on Orange County\u2019s art scene.<\/p>\n

She did eventually give up the painting, donating it to the Hilbert where it will be on view for generations to come.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s actually better here than in my house,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cEmigdio Vasquez: Retrospective 50\u201d is on view at the Hilbert Museum of California Art, 167 N. Atchison St., in Orange. The exhibition runs through May 30. For details, visit hilbertmuseum.org.<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Artist and author Rosemary Vasquez Tuthill remembers when her father, Emigdio Vasquez, asked her to pose for one…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":127254,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,165,164,65804,65806,65805,9734,6314,9831,38565,1637,38568,6607,171,27635,18120,1968,72],"class_list":["post-127253","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-anaheim","tag-anaheim","tag-anaheim-headlines","tag-anaheim-news","tag-author-rosemary-vasquez-tuthill","tag-choice-subject","tag-emigdio-vasquez","tag-exhibition","tag-father","tag-first-time","tag-hilbert-museum","tag-life","tag-mary-platt","tag-museum","tag-orange","tag-painting","tag-view","tag-work","tag-year"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127253","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=127253"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127253\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/127254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=127253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=127253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=127253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}