SAN ANTONIO — Jesse Treviño, a well-known San Antonio artist who produced some of the city’s most recognizable public art, has passed away. He was 76. The artist’s biographer Anthony Head announced the artist’s passing on his Facebook page on Monday: “It is my sad duty to report that Jesse Trevio died away early this morning.”
The Cortez family also posted a tribute on the Mi Tierra Cafe & Bakery Facebook page: “Jesse was a visionary who created many of San Antonio’s most iconic and important public art pieces that are now woven into the fabric of our city’s cultural landscape.”
Trevio underwent surgery to remove a malignant growth from his jaw in November. He has received a cancer diagnosis twice previously. About ten years ago, he received a stage four throat cancer diagnosis. Chemotherapy and radiation were used to treat it, and it entered remission.
Trevio is well-known for public artworks like “La Veladora,” a three-dimensional, 40-foot-tall mural showing a votive candle bearing the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe that is on the side of the Guadalupe Theater, and “The Spirit of Healing,” a 93-foot-tall mural he finished in 1997 on the side of Santa Rosa Children’s Hospital, which has since been renamed the Children’s Hospital of San
“That mural means a lot to a lot of people,” said Cristina Ballí, executive director of the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center. “And it is becoming an icon of the city, just like the Alamo and the Tower of the Americas.” An Army veteran who had to relearn how to paint after losing his right arm because of injuries he sustained while serving in Vietnam, Treviño first gained acclaim for his realistic paintings of everyday scenes on the city’s West Side.
His intent was to create lasting artworks, he said in an oral history with the Smithsonian Institution’s American art archives in 2004. “I want to leave things here that will be around for a long time,” he said. “And if they’re done really nice, if they’re built nicely they’ll be around forever.”
There are additional museum collections of his work. The San Antonio Museum of Art houses “Senora Dolores Trevino,” a portrait of his mother painted in 1982, and the Smithsonian Institution’s American art collection houses “Mis Hermanos,” a painting of him and his brothers created in 1976, “Tienda de Elizondo,” a picture of a mom-and-pop store painted in 1993, and “Los Santos de San Antonio,” a print from 1980.
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