Mel Casas, c. 1970.
Mel Casas (b. 1929, El Paso, TX; d. 2014, San Antonio, TX) was a pioneering Mexican American artist and activist whose work examines Chicano identity, American cultural mores, and legacies of Western art history. Casas was a central figure of the Chicano art movement and is acknowledged as foundational for establishing the themes, forms, and style that defined that movement. His best-known work is his Humanscapes series, a large body of paintings made between 1965 and 1989 that use Pop Art sensibilities and biting wit to address Chicano topics. These works are fundamentally about viewership, with each composition depicting a theater scene, distorting the boundary between fantasy, projection, and reality.