Manuel Antonio Retreat Painting

1938 Guatemala City, Guatemala
I was born in Guatemala City in 1938. I spent my first years in that Technicolored Central American country. Lush tropical vegetation was everywhere. The native Indians in their multicolored tribal costumes abounded. During 1944, my recently divorced mother and I came to the USA. We settled in Vallejo, California, a small, blue collar town full of Navy war workers. We had just come from a brightly colored provincial civilization to an energetic up-to-the minute culture, engaged in a world-wide-war and covered with soot from the effort. It surprised me that everything was always grayed by the blue Pacific marine layer. This has been the basis for much of my work, either exaggerating the color or understating it.

I emigrated to California from Guatemala in the 1940s. Influences for my work include the women weavers from the Guatemala Highlands, contemporary popular music, the Lascaux cave paintings and living in Southern California. I have tried to assimilate without corrupting who I am, a Latino. The work is about that synthesis.