Interviews, Issue 8

Roberto Gil de Montes

A still magic hiding deep inside every subject

Words RAY MARK RINALDI

Photo FABIAN MARTINEZ

Roberto Gil de Montes’ life has unfolded in three chapters. He was born in Guadalajara, Mexico and moved to East Los Angeles when he was a teenager. He earned a BFA and MFA from the Otis Art Institute and established himself as a pioneer of the Chicano art movement that emerged during the 1970s in Southern California, where he simultaneously worked as an artist, activist and teacher.

Then 34 years ago, he moved back to Mexico, settling with his longtime partner Eddie Dominguez in La Peñita de Jaltemba, a small fishing village on the Pacific coast. At 73, he continues to paint, seven days a week, in his studio located in the central plaza.

Gil de Montes, is known best for his paintings of male figures, often shirtless and expressionless, brown-skinned, standing on beaches and in jungles, eyes wide open and gazing directly back at the painter. It is impossible to know what they are thinking or doing precisely but there is a mystical, surreal quality about the work, a still magic hiding deep inside every subject as they interact on the canvas with creatures both real and imagined — owls, tigers, indigenous deities, each other.

RAY MARK RINALDI: I want to talk about your career in two ways. One is your physical journey, from living in Mexico to living in the United States to living in Mexico again. But also connect that to your artistic journey and how your painting has changed over time. So, let’s go with the biographical part first: the migration and reverse migration.

ROBERTO GIL DE MONTES: Well, you know the story of all the labels that I have now: immigrant, Mexican, Mexican-American, Chicano, gay. Somebody asked me, well, which one is it that you identify with? And I said all of them. I really think that the journey and the things that you experience in life are all a part of you.

RMR: But people need to classify you?

RG: When I first migrated, I lived in the U.S. most of the time but I would come to Mexico a lot. Whenever I arrived, people wanted to know if I thought of myself as a migrant or as a Mexican. But I caught on very early that people were labeling me. I would refuse to say. I would say I was studying and I went to school there. And I think that came from being gay, and not answering questions. I always felt that I didn’t have to tell people, and we didn’t have to tell people that we were gay because they weren’t telling us anything about themselves.

RMR: You did not care personally about belonging somewhere?

RG: When we were at the university, we were activists in Chicano politics. I think it was probably the first time I felt some sense of identity. But that wasn’t enough. We were not just Chicano. We had friends from all different parts of Latin America and felt part of something that expanded all the way to Chile.

RMR: Something bigger than just Mexican or American. I think the rest of the world is just coming around to that now, a true pan-American identity.

RG: I finished my master’s degree in art, in fine art, but I felt that I was missing something. The political acts that had happened then in Chile with Pinochet, and the disappearances of activists in Argentina and all over. I became very interested in that. I became interested in artists who were in exile because of political repercussions. So when I finished my master’s, I enrolled at Cal State L.A. in Latin American studies, and I started learning more about Cuba, Brazil, Argentina, and Latin American artists.

RMR: I see all those regional influences in your painting, in the colors, the shades of skin, the landscape, and the spiritual vibe. Let’s go back to where all that started. Are those early years when you first lived in Mexico fond memories for you?

RG: Well, yes, and no, because my parents left us with my grandparents. They left because they didn’t see any opportunities for themselves in Mexico. It was a very difficult thing not having your father, your mother, and only your grandmother. Later, when I wanted to come back to Mexico, people were shocked. Even my family said, “Well, there’s a reason why we came here, you know.”