Enrique Chagoya

Enrique Chagoya was born in Mexico City in 1953. He earned a Bachelor’s degree in economics at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico in 1975 and in 1977, he and his wife immigrated to the United States, where he found work as a free-lance illustrator, graphic designer and farm worker. He earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the San Francisco Art Institute in 1984 and a Master’s degree at the University of California at Berkeley in 1986.

His prints include “Elvis Meets the Virgin of Guadalupe”, “Fuegos”, and “Disasters of War”, among many others. His work draws upon many themes, among them, his rich Mexican heritage, modern politics and strains of Catholicism, his focus falling primarily on the U.S.-Mexican axis.

Chagoya’s work has been the subject of solo exhibitions in California and Oaxaca, Mexico. He was honored by the National Endowment for the Arts and in 1995, he won a Monet Fellowship. He currently lives in San Francisco and teaches at Stanford University.