Mel Casas

Melesio "Mel" Casas (November 24, 1929 – November 30, 2014) was an American artist, activist, writer and teacher.

After graduating from high school in 1948, Casas worked for Pacific Fruit Express, a railroad company, as an iceman, and he helped with his father's Swedish massage business located in downtown El Paso.

Later, Casas was called into the United States Army and his father insisted it was his duty to serve.

Casas served in the Korean War from 1950 to 1953, where he was wounded and subsequently awarded a Purple Heart for bravery in the war.

Casas attended college on the G.I. Bill, initially studying psychology, but he changed to art and teaching due to practical considerations.

Receiving a strong background in art theory, drawing and painting, Casas earned a BA in 1956 from Texas Western College (now the University of Texas at El Paso).

Casas went to graduate school in Mexico, and he received a MFA from the University of the Americas in Mexico City in 1958.

Casas received an all-level certificate to teach in Texas.

Regarded by his students as a "generous" teacher, he helping to launch many young art careers.

Casas taught art at Jefferson High School in El Paso, Texas for three years, where one of his students was Gaspar Enriquez.

and after that, he received a job offer at San Antonio College.

In comparison to his native El Paso, which Casas noted had very "open" race relations, Casas described San Antonio as a "colonized" city.

He is best known for a cycle of complex, large-scale paintings characterized by cutting wit, incisive cultural and political analysis, and verbal and visual puns that he called Humanscapes, which were painted between 1965 and 1989.

Only a few of these Humanscapes address Chicano topics, though they are his most famous paintings, and "have appeared repeatedly in books and exhibitions" and "are rightfully regarded as formative icons of the Chicano art movement."

Many of the Humanscape paintings, by contrast, are little known, as is much of the work Casas produced in the following quarter century.

Journalists frequently note that Casas uses paintings to "address cultural stereotypes."

However, few of his Humanscape paintings (only six) explicitly treat Chicano topics, and few of those treat stereotypes: "Casas rarely dealt with ethnicity or stereotypes in an explicit manner in his 150+ Humanscape cycle of paintings (1965-1989). Two of his greatest paintings Humanscape 62 (Brownies of the Southwest) (1970) and Humanscape 68 (Kitchen Spanish) (1973), are brilliant and complex expositions of stereotypic attitudes. His Southwestern Clichés, the last 35 of his Humanscape paintings, of course deal with clichés, but only two include stereotypic images: Humanscape 135 (#2 Mexican Plate), 1984; and Humanscape 145 (SW Cliché), 1987."

It has been argued that, given the broad range of his subject matter, Casas should "also be regarded as a major American artist."

Casas' work has been collected by the San Antonio Museum of Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art (Bentonville, Arkansas).

The six co-founders of El Grupo regard Con Safo as the final reorganization of the group they cofounded in 1968.

Casas, who initially thought he was co-founding a new group, subsequently concurred in this assessment.

Casas, who served as president of the Con Safo art group (1971–73), was a well known teacher, writer, theorist, and public intellectual whose business card listed him as a "cultural adjuster."

At San Antonio College, Casas "taught an entire generation of artists in San Antonio, many of whom went on to have successful careers as artists, teachers, gallerists, and arts administrators."

Casas' "Brown Paper Report," written in 1971, is an important Chicano and American cultural document.

Casas emphasized the importance of "self-determination" and equality for Chicanos/as.

Regarded nationally as one of the foundational figures of Chicano Art, Casas has also been called "the most influential of those artists who spent their careers in Texas during the second half of the twentieth century."

Casas felt that once artists had a fair chance to exhibit in the United States, they would be accepted as American artists and become part of "Americana."

Casas was born in El Paso, Texas to Mexican American parents during the Great Depression.

He grew up and lived in El Segundo Barrio.

His father's love of drawing influenced Casas to start drawing, and, as a young man, he decided to become an artist.

Casas had a good elementary and junior high school education, and he chose El Paso High School—which had mostly Anglo students—in order to get a better education.

Alienated from the other students because of his background and heavy Mexican accent, Casas experienced discrimination for the first time.

Casas served as president of the San Antonio-based Con Safo art group (1971–73).

Con Safo is a Pachuco slang expression whose most common meanings are: "the same to you," "don't mess with this," and "forbidden to touch."

In its abbreviated form, C/S, it is commonly used to protect murals from defacement.

The art group adopted the name "Con Safo" at Casas' suggestion on December 19, 1971, at which time Casas presented his "Brown Paper Report," which lists 22 "mostly sardonic definitions" for the term Con Safo.

In December 1971, the Con Safo group consisted of Felipe Reyes, Jose Esquivel, Jesse Almazán, Roberto Ríos, and Jose Garza (Jesse "Chista" Cantú, the other El Grupo member, was excluded at this time), and the two newly inducted members, Mel Casas and Jesse Treviño (the latter was Casas' student at San Antonio College).

In 2018, two of his large paintings were purchased for the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center in San Antonio.

His work is also held in national and international private collectors.

Casas' Humanscape paintings can be broken down into several topics, each of which follows a serial progression.