User:Valer25rs/Xochitl Nevel Guerrero

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Xochitl Nevel Guerrero (born 1954) is a Chicana artist who specializes in making murals, paintings, gourd decorations, masks, and mosaic/tile art. She is inspired by her dreams as well as her indigenous and Mexican cultures and communicates political messages and social justice themes through some of her art. Her paintings are mainly of women and include natural elements like water, plants, the sun, and the moon. She established Taller Xochichura in 2013, where she continues to share her artistic knowledge.

Early Life and Education
Xochitl Nevel Guerrero was born in 1954 in Berkeley, California, but was raised in Oakland. She was the youngest child in her family of six children. Her father, Raymundo “Zala” Nevel, came to the United States from Mexico City as part of the Bracero Program and settled in West Oakland, where he met Nevel-Guerrero’s mother. He was also a muralist, and it is because of him that Nevel-Guerrero became fascinated by art.

Nevel-Guerrero had a traumatic experience at the age of eleven that made her contemplate suicide at the age of thirteen. To cope with this, she started making art full of bright colors, changed her name, and began working in the community.

She got a summer job around the ages of fourteen and fifteen that allowed her to work with children, where she learned she wanted to create a safe space for others to express themselves in artistic forms.

Nevel-Guerrero joined baile folklórico and also learned to play the flute because of her parents' love for music and dancing. Since her father was active in the social movements of the time, she became involved as well. She joined a theater group called El Teatro Triste, where she performed skits that had political or social critiques.

At Laney College, she joined a theater group called El Teatro Calcetin, where she continued to represent and be involved in the community while making statements about current events. Nevel-Guerrero became part of the “Mujeres Muralistas,” where she connected culture, environment, and gender into her art.

After Laney College, she transferred to the University of California, Berkeley and dropped out after a year. She took a gap year and enrolled at Cal State East Bay (formerly known as CSU Hayward), where she received her degree from.

Latino America
Latino America was a mural project coordinated by the Mujeres Muralistas in 1974. Together with artists like Ester Hernández, Nevel-Guerrero created this piece on the Mission Model Cities building in San Francisco, California. She painted much of the maize, and her dreams of a corn goddess inspire her to include corn in many of her works.

La Clínica de la Raza Mural
In 1977, Nevel-Guerrero and her father painted this mural at the Clínica de la Raza in East Oakland, California. It depicts indigenous peoples and symbols as well as Mexican cultural elements, such as the Virgin of Guadalupe and a curandera healing a man laying face down.

Youth of the World, Let's Create a Better World
This mural was painted by Xochitl Nevel-Guerrero and Crystal Nevel, along with the PLACA group, in 1984. There is a young man holding the world in his arms with others around him. Those surrounding him are expressing themselves creatively through painting, breakdancing, and more.