"Las Tres Marías" by Judith Baca, 1976

Baca’s large installations and community murals explore racial and gender stereotypes

With the arrival of feminism in the 1960s and 1970s, the widely held assumption that women couldn’t be professional artists changed radically, altering the world of contemporary art. In Los Angeles's burgeoning art scene, artist Judith Baca merged innovative individual practice and feminist concerns with efforts to build community among Latinx artists and audiences. Baca’s "Las Tres Marías" (1976), which features life-sized drawings flanking a mirror, invites viewers to see themselves in relation to two defiant Chicana urban personas, a zoot-suited 1950s pachuca and a 1970s chola.

Las Tres Marías

Object Details

Date
1976
Artist
Judith F. Baca, born Los Angeles, CA 1946
Sitter
unidentified
unidentified
Gallery Label
Las Tres Marías recalls a dressing mirror, something used to examine one's appearance and perhaps try on new identities through dress and posture. Facing it, you see yourself flanked by two archetypes of urban Chicana counterculture: on the left, a contemporary chola of the 1970s, when this work was made, and on the right, a pachuca of the 1940s or 1950s.
Judith Baca created Las Tres Marías for an exhibition of Chicana artists at the Woman's Building, a predominantly white, feminist cultural space in Los Angeles. The androgynously dressed chola portrays a member of the Tiny Locas, one of the youth gangs with whom Baca worked on public murals. The cigarette-smoking pachuca was based on a photograph of Baca herself, donning the persona of one of the tough girls she both admired and feared growing up in South Central Los Angeles.
Las Tres Marías invites the questions: Who are you in relation to these figures? Do you identify with them, fear them, desire them?
Topic
Portrait female\Maria
Portrait female\full length
See more items in
Smithsonian American Art Museum Collection
Department
Painting and Sculpture
On View
Smithsonian American Art Museum, 3rd Floor, North Wing
Credit Line
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase made possible by William T. Evans
Copyright
© 1976, Judith F. Baca
Data Source
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Object number
1998.162A-C
Type
Sculpture
Restrictions & Rights
Usage conditions apply
Medium
colored pencil on paper mounted on panel with upholstery backing and mirror
Dimensions
overall: 68 1/4 x 50 1/4 x 2 1/4 in. (173.4 x 127.6 x 5.7 cm.)
GUID
http://n2t.net/ark:/65665/vk78d7f4d72-0db0-4967-b820-320a674a53c8
Record ID
saam_1998.162A-C