Chaz Bojorquez: Tres Placas (Three Tags)

"This edition was originally from the mural I painted that took me 4 days to paint at the historical Art In The Streets show at MOCA Los Angeles in 2011. We had a huge response from the public to reproduce the image as a print and it was published by Modern Multiples Publishing. This print represents three lettering styles of mine creating a layer of five decades as a graffiti writer." - Chaz Bojorquez

17-Color, Hand-Pulled Limited Edition Fine Art Serigraph

Edition of 35

Printed in 2011 by Modern Multiples, Los Angeles, on Coventry Rag Vellum 320 gsm

40" x 36" (92 x 102 cm)

Image of a wall installation as exhibited at ‘ART IN THE STREETS’ (Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 2011)

About the artist: 

As a boy in the 1950’s Chaz Bojorquez experienced “placas”, the graffiti tradition of Mexican-Americans living in East Los Angeles. Dating back to at least the mid-1930?s, Placas (or plaques) were much like a role call, symbols of territorial street boundaries and pledges of allegiance to one’s neighborhood. Not a gang member himself, he started his career tagging in the L.A. riverbed. He is acknowledged as one of the first modern writers to take graffiti out of the ‘gang’ context and into a mural/art context.

A master calligrapher, he is world renowned for his development of the old English based font known as West Coast “Cholo” style writing. His zoot-suited skull icon, inspired by Mexican folk art and the Aztec tradition, is known as Senõr Suerte (Mr. Luck) and has been adopted by individuals as a gangster image of protection from death. His work has been exhibited throughout the world and hangs in top museums including the Smithsonian and The Los Angeles Museum of Art.