Biography / Administrative History
Linda Vallejo is an acclaimed Chicana painter, sculptor, printmaker, and founder of Galeria Las Americas. Linda Vallejo’s personal collection, established in CEMA in 2001, represents a broad spectrum of her work and includes photographs, slides, posters, correspondence, publications and ephemera. Vallejo was born in East Los Angeles and was a graduate of Whittier College and also studied lithography at the University of Madrid. Vallejo received her MFA degree from California State University, Long Beach in 1978. Born into a military family, Vallejo’s father served as a colonel in the Air Force and as a diplomat and she consequently spent much of her growing up years traveling with her family throughout the United States and Europe. At the young age of seven, Vallejo had already determined she wanted to go to college and become an artist. In the early 1960’s Vallejo was in Montgomery, Alabama at a volatile time that the public schools were just being integrated, and the riots and violence affected her deeply. Her work has been exhibited extensively in one-woman shows and group shows in major museums and galleries throughout the United States, as well as Mexico. She also has been a visiting lecturer at various institutions, including the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, at UCLA, UC Irvine, California State University Long Beach, and Compton College. Paintings and sculptures by Vallejo may be found in the permanent collections of institutions such as the Carnegie Museum, the Santa Monica Museum, Arizona State University, and Self Help Graphics and Art. Vallejo has worked in printmaking and sculpture but her present medium of choice is in painting. Vallejo describes herself as “an indigenous Chicana” and as such, her work is highly symbolic and allegorical and is infused with Native American, Mexicana, and Chicana spiritual traditions.
From the guide to the Linda Vallejo Papers, 1975-2001, (University of California, Santa Barbara, Davidson Library, Department of Special Collections, California Ethnic and Multicultural Archives)
