Death of Rubén Salazar

Death of Rubén Salazar

Los Angeles (Calif.); Protest; Police brutality

Romero memorializes Rubén Salazar, a Los Angeles Times journalist and key chronicler of the Chicano civil rights movement. After covering the Chicano Moratorium of 1970, an anti-Vietnam War demonstration, Salazar stopped at the Silver Dollar Café in East LA. Reports of an armed disturbance sent deputies to the scene. A tear-gas projectile shot into the bar killed Salazar instantly. Romero combined references to this tragic day with a vision of the future when Salazar is the subject of a film announced on a theater marquee. The work’s large scale and subject link it with a tradition of grand painting that commemorates events that shaped history.

Frank Romero

Smithsonian American Art Museum

Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase made possible in part by the Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment

1986

© 1986, Frank Romero

72 1⁄4 x 120 3⁄8 in. (183.5 x 305.8 cm.)

Painting, Oil on canvas

1993.19