Nahui Ollin: The work of Andrés Cisneros-Galindo

Andrés Cisneros-Galindo is a multi-disciplinary artist and educator whose work is marked by a strong sense of history, a commitment to community organizing, and experimentation. Germinating in the 1960s from the leftist politics of his native Tijuana Mexico Cisneros-Galindo’s work took root in the Bay Area’s Chicano movement of the 1970s and through the decades has pursued an exploration of the quintessential American experience. 

This exhibition is the first major survey of Cisneros-Galindo’s wide range of work, which include collagraphs, mixed media collages, sculptures, political serigraph posters, and large abstract expressionist paintings. Together, this collection of works will offer an intimate perspective into Cisneros-Galindo’s experiences as a Mexican immigrant, activist, educator and artist grappling with the social and political currents of American life. From the political posters that helped mobilize the Bay Area’s Chicano community to the abstract expressionist paintings that embody fragments and cultural vestiges of the immigrant identity, the collection of work in this survey highlights how Cisneros-Galindo’s practice has always been integrated in contemporary struggles around race, education, the environment, justice and democracy both in the U.S. and in Mexico. 

This exhibition is organized in partnership with NIAD Art Center. 

READ THE EXHIBITION’S CATALOGUE ESSAYS

About the Artist: Andrés Cisneros-Galindo was born in Baja California in 1945. At age 14 he joined the studio of Hector Castellon in Tijuana, Mexico where he studied painting, drawing and sculpture. Andrés moved to the Bay Area in 1967 to pursue his passions – education and art. He graduated from California State University, Hayward, with a degree in Early Childhood Education and completed studies in printmaking and painting in Mexico in 1978. Cisneros-Galindo’s experiences in education range from lecturing at a Mexican university to directing the bilingual Centro Infantil de la Raza program.

Cisneros-Galindo draws much inspiration from Mexican and Indian iconography. Specializing in printmaking, Andrés founded Taller Sin Fronteras, a printmaking collective, in 1983 and joined the faculty of the National Institute of Art and Disabilities (NIAD) as a printmaking teacher, studio manager, and artistic director. His art has been exhibited internationally.

Top image: Andrés Cisneros-Galindo, Mictlan, 1998, Oil and mixed media on canvas