Judithe Hernández
Judithe Hernández is a Chicana artist and a founding member of the Chicano Art and Los Angeles Mural movements. She first received acclaim in the 1970s as a muralist, and in 1974, she became the “fifth member,” and only woman, in Los Four, an influential East Los Angeles Chicano artist collective, along with Gilbert Luján, Carlos Almaraz, Frank E. Romero, and Roberto de la Rocha. Hernández and Almaraz painted murals for labor rights leader Cesar Chavez and community murals, such as the Ramona Gardens Housing Projects in East Los Angeles, where they painted a pair of the first feminist empowerment murals.
Over her 50+ year career, she has established a significant record of exhibitions and acquisitions of her work by major public institutions and private collections which include: the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art, Philadelphia; the National Museum of Mexican Art, Chicago; the Smithsonian American Art Museum; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Blanton Museum of Art, Austin TX; the UCI Museum/Institute for California Art; the Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture; the AltaMed Collection and the Bank of America. She has been the recipient of the prestigious Artist-in-Residence at the Center for the Study of Race, Politics, & Culture, University of Chicago; the City of Los Angeles Artist Fellowship (C.O.L.A.) and the Anonymous Was a Women Grant. In 2019, after more than 40 years, her artistic presence returned to downtown Los Angeles when her seven-story mural “La Nueva Reina de Los Angeles” was installed at La Plaza Village one block north of El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument District. In 2024, she was the first artist to be given a major retrospective exhibition at the new Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture.