S.A. artist Adán Hernandez, known for ‘Blood In Blood Out’ paintings, dies (2024)

Artist Adán Hernandez’s work was collected by Hollywood heavyweights, including Cheech Marin and Helen Mirren, but many knew it best from the paintings he made for the 1993 movie “Blood In Blood Out.”

Before “Blood In Blood Out,” Hernandez was a struggling artist. After the movie came out, the monetary value of his work surged, and two of his paintings were purchased by the Metropolitan Museum of Art for its collection. One of his paintings from the film is in the San Antonio Museum of Art collection.

“All my dreams came true in an avalanche,” he said in the interview with video producer Dan Segovia posted last year to Chased by Hounds, a Facebook page devoted to the movie.

Hernandez died Saturday of heart failure. He was 69.

Marin posted a photo of the two of them on Instagram Monday, writing, “There is no purer voice from the barrio than Adán Hernandez. He was the artistic soul of Chicano noir.”

Some of Hernandez’s work was included in “Chicano Visions,” a touring exhibition drawn from Marin’s collection that opened at the San Antonio Museum of Art in 2002.

As news of the artist’s death reached Hollywood, his family received condolence calls from some of the people who worked on “Blood In Blood Out,” his younger brother Armando said, including director Taylor Hackford and costar Benjamin Bratt.

The 1993 film follows three young gang members in East Los Angeles whose lives follow divergent paths as adults— one goes to prison (Damian Chapa), one becomes a cop (Bratt) and one becomes an artist (Jesse Borrego).

Hernandez was hired for the project after a production designer happened to see some of his work in a gallery window in San Antonio, where the crew had considered shooting the film. Hackford asked Hernandez to create more than 30 paintings ascribed to Borrego’s character. He often completed a painting a day to meet the tight deadline. In interviews, he recalled that he was working so fast and so long that his hands cramped and his vision was impaired.

In addition to providing the paintings for the movie, he appeared in a brief scene. And he taught Borrego how to mix paint and how to hold a paintbrush. Borrego, a fellow San Antonian, also spent a lot of time time in Hernandez’s studio, watching him work and folding details from those hours into his performance.

They became close friends. And they had hoped to one day open a Chicano art museum on the West Side. Borrego still hopes to make that happen, with works by Hernandez as a centerpiece.

“But it’s going to be sad, looking at all his work that’s going to be past work, not the stuff he still wanted to paint,” he said. “His work will live on after him, and I think it’s going to be significant for art history one day.”

Independent curator Joseph Bravo, who was friends with Hernandez for more than 20 years, sees the late artist as one of the biggies of Chicano art, putting him on the same level as Mel Casas, Jesse Treviño and César Martínez.

The movie is what catapulted him into that tier, Bravo said.

“Those paintings were tremendously important in the Chicano imagination because where were you going to see paintings in the barrio? There were no museums, no retail art galleries,” he said.

The film sent the message that being an artist is a possibility for Latinos, he said. And Hernandez’s paintings for the film captured hopeful images.

“Yes, they dressed the way they dressed, they looked like cholos,” Bravo said. “But he humanized them, and they weren’t just caricatures any longer.”

Later, Hernandez’s work shifted to Chicano noir, darker, denser, more violent paintings. In a similar vein, he wrote and illustrated “Los Vryosos: A Tale From the Varrio,” a crime novel published in 2006.

César Martinez, who lived next door to Hernandez, said he was taken with his work the first time he saw it, and the two artists struck up a friendship.

“Like me, he tended to be very private and needed privacy to do his work, but was affable in person and very easy to hang out with,” Martínez said via email. “His passing leaves a void.”

Hernandez spent the early years of his life in Robstown, where he and his family worked in the cotton fields. When he was 9, they moved to San Antonio’s West Side. He discovered an affinity for art at Edgewood High School and studied at San Antonio College for a while. But he was put off by the emphasis on classical Greco-Roman forms — he didn’t see much of a connection between that and the Chicano experiences that he wanted to capture in his work — so he dropped out. After that, he was largely self-taught.

He encouraged up-and-coming artists along the way and inspired many of them.

“My brother and I grew up idolizing three San Antonio artists as kids: César Martínez, Jesse Treviño and Adán Hernandez, the holy trinity of San Anto Art in the ‘80s and early ‘90s,” Rigoberto Luna, an artist and curator of Presa House Gallery, wrote in an email. “I was fortunate to meet Adán through the late Manuel Castillo. My brother and my first gallery show was at Adán’s gallery El Otro Ojo. He was an original, a groundbreaker, and a torchbearer for Chicano art.”

Artist Gerardo Quetzatl Garcia remembered introducing himself as a teenager to Hernandez, nervous about meeting the artist who had created the “Blood In Blood Out” paintings.

“Never one to belittle or condescend, his enormous talent seemed to have little influence on how he treated others, and I feel that’s one of the many things that will be missed by his passing,” Garcia said.

Hernandez inspired Eddie Salinas, his second cousin, to pursue a career in music.

“He was an amazing artist and activist for the Chicano culture, and he’s influenced thousands, if not millions of Latino artists, myself being living proof that his art and stance in the culture has inspired many to strive for life outside of the barrios that a lot of us struggle to get out of,” Salinas said. “He opened the door and showed that it’s possible to pursue passions, especially within the art realm.”

And he was always game to talk about “Blood In Blood Out.” When Segovia reached out to him via Facebook about five years ago and asked if he could interview him about the movie, Hernandez responded right away, inviting him to film their chat in his studio.

“That is not an uncommon story,” Segovia said. “If you talk to almost anybody who was a big fan of his work, he extended an invitation. That’s the type of man he was. He was very open to the community, very willing to share his story.”

Segovia said many comments on the Chased by Hounds page have to do with Hernandez’s work.

“It’s wild to see people tattooing his art on their bodies,” he said. “That’s what those images mean to people.”

As important as the film is to many, including Borrego, Hernandez’s influence goes beyond it, the actor said.

“His work is very significant and prolific beyond the cult status of ‘Blood In Blood Out,’” he said. “We lost a good one.”

He is survived by his children, Adam Hernandez, James Hernandez, Cory Hernandez, Italia Lane and Clayton Hernandez, and by his siblings, Gloria Treviño, Robert Hernandez, David Hernandez, Ruben Hernandez, Armando Hernandez and Bert Hernandez.

Memorial arrangements are pending.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correctly identify Adán Hernandez’s surviving siblings.

dlmartin@express-news.net | Twitter: @DeborahMartinEN