PRESS COVERAGE
The Village Voice / Art Special, May 3, 1988, cover
Courtesy of La Plaza Cultural Archives
La Lucha Continua The Struggle Continues garnered significant critical acclaim.
The Christian Science Monitor declared in “These walls have a voice” (August 6, 1987) that “These murals pull at the eye—and sometimes the conscience.”
Writing for In These Times (October 2-8, 1985), art critic Lucy Lippard couldn’t “remember a summer when arts activists have been so active... [La Lucha is] the biggest and most impressive collective mural project to date.” Her words about Robin Michals and Kristin Reed’s collaboration apply to La Lucha as a whole: “Where collective murals too often obscure the best of individual’s [sic] styles, this collaboration integrated and enriched very different personal styles.”
Lippard concluded, “Projects like these are ignored in the ‘higher’ art altitudes, although those spheres have nonetheless acquired a certain tolerance for ‘political art’ over the last few years, thanks in no small part to the activities of precisely such progressive groups as those involved in La Lucha.”
In New York Daily News, Jimmy Breslin’s column “Walls of Sorrow on the Lower East Side” pointed to the Michals/Reed collaboration; the murals by Etienne Li and Chico that paid tribute to Michael Stewart, the 25- year old graffiti artist murdered by transit police in 1983; and Seth Tobocman’s wall protesting police brutality.
1985
ARTICLES
Eva Cockcroft, “The La Lucha Murals,”
Community Murals Magazine, Winter, 1985, p. 9-14
Jimmy Breslin, “Walls of Sorrow on the Lower East Side,”
NY Daily News, November 29, 1985, p. C6
Lucy R Lippard, “Hot Art in the Summertime,”
In These Times, October 2-8, 1985, p. 21
“Murals celebrate struggle,”
Daily World, Wednesday, September 11, 1985, p. 9-D
“These walls have a voice,”
Christian Science Monitor, August 6, 1987, p. 21-22
“Wherefore Art Now?,”
The Village Voice / Art Special, May 3, 1988, cover
VIDEO
The video La Lucha Continue The Struggle Continues by John Hunt documents the dedication ceremony celebrating the completion of the 1985 murals—two additional murals were painted in 1986—and includes interviews with most of the participating artists.
This earlier video from 1984—You Know…The Struggle—looks at many murals on the Lower East Side and includes an interview with Eva Cockcroft, who spearheaded La Lucha.
2017
PUBLICATION
La Lucha Continua The Struggle Continua: 1985 & 2017
Exhibition catalog, $15 + $5 postage/handling, available from ArtmakersNYC@gmail.com
ARTICLES
Holland Cotter, “10 Galleries to Visit Now on the Lower East Side,”
“47 Galleries That Bring You the Art of Now” “If You’re Feeling Politically Minded…”
The New York Times / Spring Gallery Guide / April 27, 2017
Puma Perl, “‘La Lucha Continua’ exhibit celebrates enduring message of ’80s muralists,”
The Villager, May 24, 2017
This article appeared in the May 24, 2017 print editions of The Villager, The Villager Express, Chelsea Now, and Downtown Express.
April Greene, “AWESOME PROJECT: artists are elevating political issues through murals,”
ioby.org, April 6, 2017
Eleanor J. Bader, “Making Murals in the Public Interest,”
The Lilith Blog, April 3, 2017
VIDEO
A few months before the exhibition’s opening in April 2017, La Lucha muralist Maria Dominguez videotaped Chino Garcia being interviewed by curator Jane Weissman. Co-founder of CHARAS, Chino was instrumental in obtaining the permissions that allowed Artmakers to paint on the seven walls of the four buildings surrounding La Plaza Cultural. Ryan John Lee edited the resulting video
This interview focuses on Loisaida murals and community gardens. It is part of a larger documentation of the neighborhood, a collaboration between FABnyc and The Loisaida Center, which granted permission for the video’s inclusion here.
Village Preservation (Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation) sponsored two illustrated talks by Jane Weissman on Lower East Side murals and granted permission for their inclusion here.
The first—Protest & Celebration: Community Murals of the 1970s & 1980s on the Lower East Side and East and West Villages(link)—was presented in January 2016 and is an historical overview of the neighborhood’s murals.
The second—East Village Political Art: The Murals of “La Lucha Continua—was jointly presented in May 2017 by Village Preservation and City Lore—and focused on the La Plaza Cultural murals and the many projects they inspired.