Three Works by One of the Most Original Chicano Prison Artists

[Three Related Paños (Chicano Prison Art)]

Peña, Leonard

Notes: A fine example of Chicano prison art, an informal triptych finely drawn on three pieces of cloth depicting prison scenes connected by a repeating figure, probably a portrait of the artist, Leonard Peña, who is probably the best known paño artists.

Pena's (or Peña's) work is frequently cited in studies of Chicano prison art. See for example, Victor Alejandro Sorell, "Latino Visual Culture Behind Bars... Refuge and Solace in Words and Images: The Revelations of Leonard Peña's Paño" in Oboler, Behind Bars; Sorell's "Illuminated Handkerchiefs, Tattooed Bodies, and Prison Scribes" in Baugh, Mediating Chicana/o Culture: Multicultural American Vernacular; and "Paños: L'art brut de décoffrage des prisonniers chicanos" by Damien Grimbert in Clark Magazine, no. 45. Peña's work has been exhibited at The Drawing Center in New York (See Drawing Papers no. 140, p. 104) and the New England Center for Contemporary Arts (see Henry, Art from the Inside: Paño Drawings by Chicano Prisoners).

The term paños, a Spanish word meaning "cloths", is probably a shortened form of pañuelos, or handkerchiefs. Paños, ball-point pen drawings on hemmed cloth squares, are the dominant form of Chicano prison art. The artists frequently use flexible ball-point pen refills and cloth squares sold at prison commissaries (to discourage inmates from tearing their sheets). Typical paños incorporate collages of stylized motifs involving fantasies of beautiful women, cars, and recreational drugs. This grouping has many allegorical elements but it is distinguished by seemingly realistic portraits of inmates and vignettes of a prison landscape.

The recurring figure, possibly a self-portrait of the artist, is shown in horizontally-striped prison garb; in one paño his prison number is fully visible. In another, part of the number is visible, matching the first paño. In the third work, the uniform does not have a number but the figure seems to have the same dragon tattoos encircling his forearms. The first paño is signed "Pena 96." The three are unmistakably the work on Leonard Peña.

In addition to traditional symbols like clowns (a smile-now, cry-later symbol), the temptations of women (here represented by what appears to be a repeated head-and-shoulders portrait of the same person), gambling (playing cards), and marijuana leaves, these paños depict aspects of prison life. There are strings of barbed wire, gun towers, rioting prisoners, the skulls of those serving life sentences, rows of solitary confinement (or perhaps Death Row) cells, and many portraits may be drawn from life.

One of the paños includes a sketch of a prison riot with a man on the ground being shanked. This image is very similar to a scene depicted in in one of Peña's most widely reproduced drawings, "Beat Down."
Each 14-1/2 by 14-1/2 inches.

Edition + Condition: Fine, clean examples. The paños have small stickers at the bottom (as usual for Peña's work). The are P941 (clown in upper left corner), P948 (guard with rifle in upper left corner), and P815 (inmate in sunglasses in upper left corner).

Publication: 1996.

Item No: #3098

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