The Pacific Pinball Museum in Alameda where Fontes had served on the board of directors, and where several of his smaller scale murals are on display, confirmed the news<\/a> on Tuesday night. The announcement said that he had died after a battle with cancer.<\/p>\n Never miss a story. Sign up for The Oaklandside\u2019s free daily newsletter.<\/p>\n Oakland muralist David Burke was one of the first to announce the news on social media<\/a>, writing, \u201cWe have lost another giant in the Bay Area art world.\u201d Burke, who credits Fontes as his inspiration for making art in large public spaces, posted a moving tribute.<\/p>\n \u201cI first encountered the Giraffix mural beneath the 580 freeway in 1983 when I was eight years old,\u201d Burke wrote in the post. \u201cSeeing this majestic giraffe from the back seat of our Volkswagen station wagon, I remember the magic of seeing that beautiful creature & the way it stopped time for a moment. What I couldn\u2019t have known then was how that experience planted a seed that would quietly shape my path as an artist.\u201d<\/p>\n Other tributes poured in honoring Fontes\u2019s legacy.<\/p>\n \u201cRIP to the legendary muralist @danfontesart whose Giraphics, Animurals, and so many more pieces of public art raised generations of Oakland kids with generous environmental activism,\u201d the Oakland apparel company Oaklandish wrote in an Instagram post. \u201cWe were honored to reproduce one of his giraffes on tees way back in 2009 and then zebras after that. We always meant to reconnect and work together again, we just never thought that time would run out so quickly. Thank you for being so kind, and an inspiration to so many of us.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI met Dan years ago and also poured out my love and admiration for his work,\u201d Oakland artist Jet Martinez commented in Burke\u2019s post on Instagram. \u201cHe was truly a kind and generous artist. A real role model and one hell of a painter.\u201d<\/p>\n Over the course of his career as a muralist, Fontes painted dozens of public murals around the Bay Area, including the \u201cGiraphics\u201d mural, completed in 1983, on Oakland and Harrison streets beneath I-580.<\/p>\n One of his other wildlife murals in Oakland is the 1984 project \u201cAnimurals,\u201d <\/a>which was restored in 2016. In the years since, the mural has endured years of tagging, leaving its zebras barely visible.\u00a0<\/p>\n Much of his work spoke to his environmental activism, honored Bay Area history, and represented Oakland\u2019s vibrancy including the \u201cMontclair Duck Pond,\u201d the \u201cOakland Gems\u201d which depicted landmarks like the Camron-Stanford House, and the Grand Lake Theatre. Also, the \u201cEmergent Sea Turtles\u201d near 23rd Avenue and I-880.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI seek a sense of timelessness and resonance in the images I choose to make public,\u201d Fontes wrote in an artist\u2019s statement. \u201cI\u2019ve 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.\u201d<\/p>\n His public murals weren\u2019t limited to the East Bay. In 1997, Fontes painted \u201cSalud! The Bethany Senior Center,\u201d as part of the 21st Street Mural Project<\/a> in San Francisco\u2019s Mission neighborhood. In talking to SFGATE about this project<\/a>, Fontes said that he interviewed, sketched and photographed 15 seniors who lived at the apartment complex. The mural is still visible on the side of the building.\u00a0<\/p>\n Fontes was known for rallying financial support<\/a> from community members who were fans of his work to help pay for restorations. Fontes restored the \u201cGiraphics\u201d mural in 1994 and again in 2016.\u00a0<\/p>\n Fontes also fought for the rights of muralists to preserve their work. In 2014, he sued the operators of the former Autocom Nissan<\/a> on 27th Street and Broadway, seeking $400,000 in damages for the company\u2019s decision to paint over a striking, colossal Lake Merritt landscape<\/a> he had painted in 1987.\u00a0<\/p>\n Intellectual property attorney Brooke Oliver, who represented Fontes at the time, told KQED when the lawsuit was filed, \u201cThis is Dan Fontes\u2019 baby. It\u2019s his best work. And it\u2019s hard to imagine how anyone can look at a piece of art like that and just want to paint it out.\u201d Oliver cited the U.S. Visual Artist Rights Act<\/a>, a 1990 copyright law that requires the owner of a building with a large-scale mural to give the artist 90-days\u2019 notice before a work is removed or painted over.\u00a0<\/p>\n The following year, the parties entered into a confidential settlement<\/a>.<\/p>\n Fontes never stopped inspiring younger muralists like Burke who followed in his footsteps \u2014 just as Richmond-based artist John Wehrle and Oakland-based artist Daniel Galvez had inspired Fontes, as mentioned in his artist\u2019s statement.<\/p>\n When Burke was working on the second in his monumental series \u201cLove Letter to Oakland\u201d alongside artists Pancho Pescador and Joevic Yeban \u2014 a mural in Temescal<\/a> that honors the late conductor Michael Morgan and artist Hung Liu \u2014 Fontes would stop by to check on their progress<\/p>\n \u201cI am grateful to have had the opportunity to share with Dan the profound impact he had made, not only on me, but on an entire generation of young artists finding their way,\u201d Burke wrote in a tribute.\u00a0<\/p>\n No announcement has yet been made about a public memorial.\u00a0<\/p>\n …We rely on your support<\/p>\n Hey, we know that most readers only scan a headline and a couple of paragraphs. 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One of Fontes\u2019 iconic giraffes on a column beneath the I-580 near Oakland and Harrison streets. Credit: Pete Rosos for The Oaklandside<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/oaklandside.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/IMG_8237-1200x1600.jpg\")
From left to right: muralists Pancho Pescador, David Burke, and Dan Fontes in front of Burke and Pescador\u2019s mural \u201cLove Letter to Oakland\u201d in 2022. Credit: courtesy of David Burke<\/p>\n