Melesio "Mel" Casas (November 24, 1929 – November 30, 2014) was an American artist, activist, writer and teacher. He is best known for a cycle of complex, large-scale paintings characterized by cutting wit, incisive cultural and political analysis, and verbal and visual puns that he called Humanscapes, which were painted between 1965 and 1989. Only a few of these Humanscapes address Chicano topics, though they are his most famous paintings, and "have appeared repeatedly in books and exhibitions" and "are rightfully regarded as formative icons of the Chicano art movement."Cordova, Ruben C. (2015) "Getting the Big Picture: Mel Casas and the Politics of the 1960s and 1970s" (exhibition brochure), San Antonio: Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center, June 5-October 24. Many of the Humanscape paintings, by contrast, are little known, as is much of the work Casas produced in the following quarter century.
Journalists frequently note that Casas uses paintings to "address cultural stereotypes." However, few of his Humanscape paintings (only six) explicitly treat Chicano topics, and few of those treat stereotypes: "Casas rarely dealt with ethnicity or stereotypes in an explicit manner in his 150+ Humanscape cycle of paintings (1965-1989). Two of his greatest paintings Humanscape 62 (Brownies of the Southwest) (1970) and Humanscape 68 (Kitchen Spanish) (1973), are brilliant and complex expositions of stereotypic attitudes. His Southwestern Clichés, the last 35 of his Humanscape paintings, of course deal with clichés, but only two include stereotypic images: Humanscape 135 (#2 Mexican Plate), 1984; and Humanscape 145 (SW Cliché), 1987." It has been argued that, given the broad range of his subject matter, Casas should "also be regarded as a major American artist."
Casas' Humanscapes have been collected by the Whitney Museum of American ArtCordova, Ruben C. (2025). “Mel Casas and Luis Jiménez: Two Chicano Trailblazers from Texas,” in Dan Nadel, Laura Phipps, Scott Rothkopf, and Elisabeth Sussman, eds., Sixties Surreal, New Haven: Yale University Press (distributed for the Whitney Museum of American Art).; San Antonio Museum of Art; Smithsonian American Art Museum; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; McNay Art Museum; and the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art (Bentonville, Arkansas). In 2018, two of his Humanscapes were purchased for the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center in San Antonio. His work is held in national and international private collectors. Casas' Humanscape paintings can be broken down into several topics, each of which follows a serial progression.Hickey, David (1988). "Mel Casas: Border Lord." Artspace: Southwestern Contemporary Arts Quarterly 12, no. 4: 28–31. Casas, who served as president of the Con Safo art group (1971–73), was a well known teacher, writer, theorist, and public intellectual whose business card listed him as a "cultural adjuster." At San Antonio College, Casas "taught an entire generation of artists in San Antonio, many of whom went on to have successful careers as artists, teachers, gallerists, and arts administrators."Cordova, Ruben C. (2014). "Mel Casas Memorial Exhibition: From First to Last" (exhibition brochure), San Antonio, Centro de Artes.
Casas' "Brown Paper Report," written in 1971, is an important Chicano and American cultural document. Casas emphasized the importance of "self-determination" and equality for Chicanos/as. Regarded nationally as one of the foundational figures of Chicano Art, Casas has also been called "the most influential of those artists who spent their careers in Texas during the second half of the twentieth century." Casas felt that once artists had a fair chance to exhibit in the United States, they would be accepted as American artists and become part of "Americana."
Early life and education Casas was born in El Paso, Texas to Mexican American parents during the Great Depression. He grew up and lived in El Segundo Barrio. His father's love of drawing influenced Casas to start drawing, and, as a young man, he decided to become an artist. Casas had a good elementary and junior high school education, and he chose El Paso High School—which had mostly Anglo students—in order to get a better education. Alienated from the other students because of his background and heavy Mexican accent, Casas experienced discrimination for the first time. After graduating from high school in 1948, Casas worked for Pacific Fruit Express, a railroad company, as an iceman, and he helped with his father's Swedish massage business located in downtown El Paso.
Later, Casas was called into the United States Army and his father insisted it was his duty to serve. Casas served in the Korean War from 1950 to 1953, where he was wounded and subsequently awarded a Purple Heart for bravery in the war.
Casas attended college on the G.I. Bill, initially studying psychology, but he changed to art and teaching due to practical considerations. Receiving a strong background in art theory, drawing and painting, Casas earned a BA in 1956 from Texas Western College (now the University of Texas at El Paso). Casas went to graduate school in Mexico, and he received a MFA from the University of the Americas in Mexico City in 1958.
Academic and Art Careers Casas received an all-level certificate to teach in Texas. Regarded by his students as a "generous" teacher, he helping to launch many young art careers. Casas taught art at Jefferson High School in El Paso, Texas for three years, where one of his students was Gaspar Enriquez. and after that, he received a job offer at San Antonio College. In comparison to his native El Paso, which Casas noted had very "open" race relations, Casas described San Antonio as a "colonized" city.
Casas served as president of the San Antonio-based Con Safo art group (1971–73). Con Safo is a Pachuco slang expression whose most common meanings are: "the same to you," "don't mess with this," and "forbidden to touch."Cordova, Ruben C. (2009). Con Safo: The Chicano Art Group and the Politics of South Texas. Los Angeles: UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center Press, p. 67. In its abbreviated form, C/S, it is commonly used to protect murals from defacement. The art group adopted the name "Con Safo" at Casas' suggestion on December 19, 1971, at which time Casas presented his "Brown Paper Report," which lists 22 "mostly sardonic definitions" for the term Con Safo. The six co-founders of El Grupo regard Con Safo as the final reorganization of the group they cofounded in 1968. Casas, who initially thought he was co-founding a new group, subsequently concurred in this assessment. In December 1971, the Con Safo group consisted of Felipe Reyes, Jose Esquivel, Jesse Almazán, Roberto Ríos, and Jose Garza (Jesse "Chista" Cantú, the other El Grupo member, was excluded at this time), and the two newly inducted members, Mel Casas and Jesse Treviño (the latter was Casas' student at San Antonio College). Other notable artists who subsequently joined the group include Rudy Treviño (who subsequently served as the group's last president), Santos Martínez, César Martínez, Amado Peña, Jr., Carmen Lomas Garza, Kathy Vargas, Roberto Gonzalez, and Rolando Briseño. In its later years, after some of the older artists dropped out of the group, a high proportion of group members were students of Casas at San Antonio College. At group meetings, members discussed Chicano art and politics, as well as other social and political issues. They also gained artistic exposure by participating in exhibitions. Beginning in 1972, the group required insurance and charged exhibiting institutions a fee. Con Safo was one of the earliest and most important Chicano art groups, and it helped Chicano art receive recognition when Chicanos and their work were largely excluded from museums and galleries.
Casas taught for 29 years at San Antonio College where he was Chair of the Art Department for 12 years. He enjoyed teaching a "very good cross-section of the city," but serving as chair was stressful, since he was often on call. He retired in 1990. Afterward, Casas and his wife Grace went to Italy, spending two years in Brindisi and two in Sicily.
Critical reception Casas often paid a price for his trenchant social criticism. He was designated "Artist of the Year" by the San Antonio Art League for 1968, only to have this honor revoked three days later. Casas, who referred to the dominant notion of beauty as the "Barbie doll ideal," spoke of the privileges of blond hair and blue eyes while he undressed a Barbie doll during his San Antonio Art League lecture, which is why his award was taken away.
As a fellow artist, he was good at asking critical questions of the work of others and encouraging them to submit their work to exhibitions and competitions.
Personal life Casas had a two-year battle with cancer. He died in his home with his family and his wife of 35 years, Grace Casas. He and Grace had one child, Bruce. With his first wife, Maria, Mel had four children: Alfredo, Ingrid, Mike and Sonya.
Artistic Practice Casas was first recognized for his work in an abstract expressionist style, the "typical," dominant mode of painting in this period in the United States. Casas came to feel that his abstract work was too "pretty," and that it was an inappropriate artistic language for him. Casas, it is said, also believed that "artists shouldn't merely imitate subject matter or painterly styles emanating from Europe or New York."Cordova, Ruben C. (2015) "Mel Casas: The Southwestern Clichés, 1982-1989" (exhibition brochure), San Antonio: Texas A&M University-San Antonio Educational and Cultural Arts Center, June 11-September 27. He began transitioning to a representational style in 1965, when he began his Humanscape series. Though Casas is best known for a handful of Humanscape paintings that treat Chicano themes, this cycle features an unusually wide array of works with varied themes, styles, and objects of criticism, and a number of his post-Humanscape works also address social issues.
It has been argued that because Casas wrote the phrase “to destroy stereotypes and demolish visual clichés” in a document called "A Contingency Factor" in 1972, journalists and writers have taken this statement as "an interpretive keystone or blueprint" for his oeuvre, and they have utilized the phrase to characterize his art. But, of the approximately 800 art works Casas created, "only a handful treat Chicano subjects, and of these, even fewer feature recognizable stereotypical images." As one critic noted, "Though he was loath to adhere to any single artistic perspective, he is credited with infusing the Chicano art movement with sharp wit and intellectualism, invigorating (and inciting) his peers and empowering his successors to do the same."
In 2024, his work was included in Xican-a.o.x. Body, a major group exhibition on the contributions by Chicano artists to the realm of visual arts. The show was first on view at Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture of the Riverside Art Museum, California, and the Pérez Art Museum Miami, Florida.
The Humanscape Cycle of Paintings, 1965-1989