Carlos Almaraz was a leading member of the Chicano arts movement in Los Angeles in the 1970s and ’80s. Almaraz earned his MFA from Otis College of Art and Design in 1974. He was involved in political activism throughout the 1970s, producing banners for rallies in support of Cesar Chavez’s United Farm Workers labor union. As a member of the Chicano arts collective Los Four, he and fellow artists Frank Romero, Roberto de la Rocha, and Gilbert Luján painted public murals throughout Los Angeles that depicted the civil rights struggles of Mexican Americans and helped bring Chicano art to the attention of the mainstream art world. His paintings and prints portrayed the vitality of East Los Angeles through stylized forms and an expressive use of bold purple, pink, and orange hues. A major retrospective of Almaraz’s work was presented at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 2017 (via Artsy).

Southwest Song is a silkscreen print made in 1988 by Carlos Almaraz. The central figure in this composition is a luminous turquoise cowboy atop a horse. He follows close behind the silhouette of a running woman. A black dog with bared teeth and a darting tongue chases after him, and a devil’s grinning face hangs suspended in the air. The head of an anthropomorphic cat-human hybrid juts into the right-hand side of the frame, its mouth open as if emitting noise. In the foreground, a jester-like figure reclines as he plucks at a banjo, seated beside a horned animal’s skull and a cactus. All of this takes place amidst a psychedelic swirl of colors and beneath a thin crescent moon and white flecks for stars.