Antonio E. Garcia was born in Monterrey, Mexico on December 27, 1901. His mother died not long after his birth, and he was raised by his father, who was manager of a wire nail factory. In 1914, During the Mexican Revolution, his father sent 12-year-old Garcia and his two sisters to live with their grandfather and three aunts in San Diego, Texas. The stay was intended to last a couple of months, but it became permanent when Garcia’s father decided the children were safer in the United States.
Garcia married Herminia Gonzalez, his high school sweetheart from San Diego, Texas, in 1929. They moved to Corpus Christi in 1936 after Garcia realized he could not make a living on art in San Diego. The couple had five children and remained married until Herminia’s death on November 14, 1986. Garcia credited Herminia’s support as part of his successful career.
Garcia made a living during the Great Depression largely through public works mural painting and commissions for commercial signs. This included his “March on Washington” painting, which was commissioned by the Public Works Administration and expressed his opinion of unfair treatment of World War I veterans not properly paid for their military service.
In his 80s, Garcia’s vision began to fail and forced him into retirement. He spent approximately his last decade legally blind, which he said was very hard on him, as painting had been his source of happiness and visual arts his method of expression.
Garcia lived to age 96 and died November 3, 1997. His memorial Mass was said at Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Corpus Christi, the site of some of his best known frescoes. He is buried at San Diego Cemetery in San Diego, Texas.
Education
Garcia knew he wanted to be a painter since he was a boy in school in Monterrey. As a high schooler in San Diego, he took a correspondence class in commercial art.
Focused on his future art career, Garcia got a job selling tickets at his aunt’s silent movie theatre in San Diego to save money for art school, which he would begin at age 26.
Garcia attended the Art Institute of Chicago from 1927-1930. He returned to San Diego for a time when money ran out, but he saved enough to return to college and graduate with honors. While in college he received the Frederic Brand Award for composition, the Municipal Art League Prize, and first place in the Civic League of Chicago poster contest. The poster contest came with a $100 prize, which he said was a welcome help as a financially struggling student.
As a professional, Garcia remained a student of art, including studying at Del Mar College under artists Frederic Taubes and Jacob Getlar Smith. He also studied with George Oberteuffer, Wayman Elbridge Adams, and Boris Izrailevich Anisfeld . Adams had been a student of Robert Henri, and Henri’s influence reached Garcia “an appreciation of the value of his immediate surroundings for subject matter.” Garcia also cited Mexican muralists Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and Jose Orozco as influences in his work.
Art
Garcia was known for painting landscapes, portraits, and an occasional narrative scene. He often explored human figures and their placement in space, and in the use of diagonals. The Art Museum of South Texas classified him as a South Texas regionalist, a perspective that developed in American art following the Great Depression and “emphasized the relationship of the American people to their daily environment…Regionalism generally depicted optimistic American images and the treatment of landscape as a unique portrait of a place.”
Garcia worked in various media, including oil, watercolor, acrylic, egg tempera, casein, pastels, charcoal, crayon, and wood carving. However, he is probably best known for his frescoes. They cover walls of several South Texas churches, with details like rattlesnakes, agave, and prickly pear adding a regional flair to traditional Catholic symbolism.
Fresco painting is an ancient art that involves applying powdered pigments to fresh plaster before it dries. Lime and sand are mixed with the water and pigment. Over time and exposure to air, the substance hardens and forms a glossy protective coating that can last centuries or millennia. Before applying coloring, Garcia would lay six coats of foundation. Due to the nature of masonry, when Garcia started on a section of fresco, he would have to continue until the section was complete, which sometimes kept him working up on scaffolding from 8am until 3 or 4 am the following day. Some of his works reached 30 to 40 feet high, and a single fresco panel might take five or six months of intensive effort to complete. Garcia was self-taught at frescos, using books to study how the Egyptians, Aztecs, and Etruscans created theirs. Few fresco artists remained in the United States when Garcia practiced the art form, and he lamented its decline.
During his career, Garcia’s painting was represented in collections including the Centennial Art Museum, Texas A&I University, and the Texas Federation of Women’s Clubs. In 1988, the Art Museum of South Texas held the show “Antonio Garcia: A South Texas Regionalist” from February 2 to March 20, which he later called a highlight of his career . His work also toured the country, including the National Touring Bicentennial Exhibit’s ’17 Mexican-American Artists’ in 1976, the Latin American Presence in the United States, 1920-1970 show at the Bronx Museum , the Texas Centennial exhibit at the Dallas Museum in 1936 , the Mexican-American exhibit at the Cordova Museum in Boston in 1976, the Illinois Bell Centennial Exhibit in Chicago, and the New Mexican Museum in San Francisco .
Teaching
Antonio E. Garcia is now known foremost as an artist, but teaching art and contributing to the art community were an integral part of his career. Garcia was described as a “particularly influential” teacher by Dr. Jacinto Quirarte, then an associate professor of art history at the University of Texas.
Garcia taught art at Del Mar College for more than 25 years, at the Centennial Museum of Corpus Christi, and private classes in his studio, which for many years was at his home.
He also taught art on excursions to Mexico, in sites including San Miguel de Allende, Durango, Mazatlan, Guadalajara, Morelia, and Saltillo. His teaching workshops in Saltillo were annual affairs that the public could sign up for, beginning in 1954 and running through at least 1971. The trips often took place in May or June and lasted around two weeks. Garcia would provide instruction in landscape and portrait painting, and the group would take excursions to surrounding towns and landscapes.
Community Involvement
Garcia often volunteered for the community, especially in some of the areas most meaningful to him: art and the Catholic faith. Garcia was a charter member of the South Texas Art League and a trustee of the Texas Fine Arts Association. He served as a city arts advisor, hosted visiting artists, juried art exhibits, and donated time to the police department as a sketch artist. Police credited a 1957 sketch he drew based on a description of a suspect with helping catch a man who had robbed two local stores.
He was an officer of the Knights of Columbus Council 2710, a Catholic men’s charitable organization, and served as guest speaker on art and the Church.
Carrying on Antonio E. Garcia’s Legacy
In a news interview, Garcia indicated that his legacy went beyond winning art awards: “God has been good to me. I have five lovely children. That was my dream – to rear good citizens who would contribute to the welfare of their community.” Garcia also loved collecting and reading books, especially on the topics of history, philosophy, and psychology, although he admitted that his work left little time to read them.
The dream of Garcia remains a core value of the Antonio E. Garcia Arts & Education Center, which aims to empower citizens to be their best and to contribute to their communities. The Garcia Center strives to carry on Garcia’s legacy by incorporating arts, education, and literacy into everyday learning and discovery for children and adults alike.
