Frank Romero
B. July 11, 1941
Frank Romero is a leading Chicano artist whose colorful paintings, murals, and designs tell us what Chicano life and culture are. He first encountered the art world as a teenager through a summer program at the Otis College of Art and Design, where he immersed himself in a creative environment that shaped his path. In 1959 he enrolled at California State University, Los Angeles, developing his practice alongside peers like Carlos Almaraz. Although his career began to flourish before he finished school, Romero later returned to complete his degree, earning a B.A. in Art in 2009.
His Home was Home to Many: A community hub for other chicano artist to create together
Frank Romero’s home was a home for many Chicano artist during the late 60’s. Located in Angelino Heights, between Temple Street and Sunset Boulevard in Echo Park, Romero’s home became the meeting place and creative workshop for Los Four and many East L.A. artists at the time.
During the early 1970s, Frank and Carlos lived there together for nearly a decade. Rooms like the kitchen and living room transformed into sites of dense pláticas, where Los Four sketched mural drafts, planned exhibitions, and strategized political messages. It was not merely peer-to-peer collaboration, pero trabajo como si fueran familia. The artists trusted one another — sharing space, meals, and frustrations. Frank’s home functioned as both sanctuary and studio, a place where they could create and speak freely.
Because Frank opened his home, Los Four’s work expanded by teaching the wider Chicano art scene in East L.A how to work collaboratively. Local artists, especially the younger ones, were encouraged to swing by and share materials, give feedback, and work on their sketches. His home connected personal art practice with collective growth, becoming a space for both creating art and building community.
Besided his home and other studios, many of his art pieces and sites of practice are also housed in his daughters’, Sonia Romero, home. Sonia, an artist herself, and her sister Rosie’s home have also been a place of creation. In January 2025, the Los Angeles wildfires destroyed Rosie’s home, and several of Frank’s works that had been kept there were lost. This moment highlights how family homes often function as informal archives, especially for artists whose work started as community practice.
Frank’s Recent Home
Although Frank and his family moved several times, these images are the only glimpses I found of his recent home, where he lived for about 20 years before relocating to southern France. This home, 1625 Blake Ave, is 15 minutes from the Griffith Observatory and is up for sale.
Artistic Style
Similarly to Carlos Almaraz and Magu Lujan’s art, Frank’s art included aspects of the city that many wanted to ignore. While his murals still feature vibrant neon-like highways, underpasses, and industrial landscapes, Frank aimed to show stories as they truly happened. His work vividly depicted what it meant to be brown in Los Angeles, the pain, the joy all included. His murals are beautiful, yet they do not always tell beautiful stories, and this is where his artistic style comes into play and differentiates itself from Los Four collective art pieces.
In The Arrest of the Paletero, Romero takes an ordinary scene of a paletero at work and transforms it into something much larger. The vendors raise their hands high as police headlights shine directly on them, while a cotton candy seller runs away in the background. This moment echoes the experiences many Latinos have faced, encountered or witnessed. Frank himself noted that the painting was created in solidarity with the harassment of Latino laborers, particularly undocumented workers who were often criminalized by police under the guise of immigration enforcement. His style and composition capture the urgency and fear of the scene, set against the still, almost dreamlike beauty of Los Angeles painted in his signature saturated neon palette. Above is another example of this narrative depicted, but instead it’s a Mexican taco truck vendor being arrested in historic MacArthur Park, a 15-minute drive from Frank’s home neighborhood of Boyle Heights.
Death of Ruben Salazar is a well-known painting where Frank depicts the killing of journalist Ruben Salazar by Los Angeles police. Salazar became a key Chicano voice in both mainstream and Spanish-language media, often exposing racism and police violence. In 1970, while covering the Chicano Moratorium against the Vietnam War, he was killed after a sheriff’s deputy fired a tear gas projectile into a bar where he was sitting. This act was widely seen as state violence meant to silence him. This large-scale work is one of many that show the harsh realities of being brown while speaking out for your community.
Lowriders and Highways
In addition to showing the constant police violence against brown communities, Frank was intent on portraying the contemporary city of Los Angeles and the vibrant culture of artistic expression through lowriders. Magu Lujan highlights lowriders, often presenting them as symbols or entities, but Frank depicted them more directly, as vehicles where the Chicano presence becomes visible in his art.
Here we have Cheech’s Downtown, referencing a visit to Cheech Marin, the comedian, actor, and art collectorator. Marin recently opened the Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art and Culture, located in Riverside, which does include a variety of Franks’ and Los Four art pieces.
Frank was never afraid to show parts of the city, like highways and underpasses, that people often wanted to leave out of what makes Los Angeles beautiful. Thinking about the rapid construction and implementation of highways in the city, Frank and Los Four didn’t shy away from representing this urbanization. They didn’t necessarily celebrate it, especially because they saw firsthand how urban renewal projects divided their city and split up long-standing communities. Instead, Los Four acknowledged the highways, refused to ignore them, and pushed the audience to think about their lasting impact on the neighborhoods they cut through. Lowriders appear again but as a way of reclaiming those same roads meant to separate communities. Through cruising, they practiced placemaking on streets that were supposed to divide them.
Another huge and impactful mural by Frank Romero is Going to the Olympics, located on the 101 Freeway, also known as the Hollywood Freeway, in downtown Los Angeles. This mural is massive, stretching about 198 feet long, and it features his iconic lowriders “on the road” to the 1984 Summer Olympics. Frank was invited to create this piece as part of the city’s mural program leading up to the Olympics, when Los Angeles commissioned artists to showcase the city’s culture and identity to a global audience. By placing lowriders at the center Frank, once again, celebrated Chicano culture on one of the most visible canvases in the city, showing that these cars and the people who created and rode them, belonged in the story of Los Angeles just as much as the Olympics themselves.
For many years, the mural was hidden from view after being covered with gray paint during the city’s anti-graffiti efforts in the late 2000s. What was once a vibrant landmark of Chicano culture and Los Angeles pride became a blank wall, erasing Frank’s contribution to the city’s history.
It wasn’t until late 2012 and early 2013 that the mural was brought back to life, thanks to a restoration project supported by the Department of Cultural Affairs, Wells Fargo Foundation, Ralph M. Parsons Foundation and most importantly, artist Willie Herron and Mural Conservancy of Los Angeles (MCLA), who provided the funding. The restoration not only revived the bold colors and imagery of Frank’s work but also symbolized the recognition of its importance as a cultural icon and a reminder of Chicano visibility in Los Angeles.
Frank Today
After taking a short break from Los Angeles, Frank spent a few years living in France with his family from 2010 to 2016. While there, he kept growing his art practice and explored what it meant to carry his Chicano identity in a totally different environment. Surrounded by new people and ideas, he started experimenting more with color, form, and storytelling, even picking up a bit of French influence in his work.
Since coming back to East L.A., Frank has been pouring what he learned abroad back into the same community that raised him. He’s dedicated to mentoring younger Chicano artists, offering advice, feedback, and even opening his studio as a space to create and collaborate. In a lot of ways, his journey has come full circle.
Rise of the Resistance
