About the artist

Gamaliel Ramirez is one of the great pioneer veterans of Chicago Latino art. He came to Chicago from the Bronx, and brought the Nuyorican cultural revolution with him. For over twenty-years, he has projected images of urban life, the struggles of Puerto Ricans and others in the urban turf, always with an element of self-portraiture (he is both the artist and Señor Everyman tossed, lost but always somehow finding himself between tradition and modernity, Puerto Rican, Caribbean,Latino and Anglo American big city norms) and always with a wry sense of humor and irony. Ramirez's image presented here was commissioned by the LASA local arrangements committee in conjunction with LACASA Chicago, to be used for the LASA program, teeshirts and posters, as we ll as for our LACASA post-LASA MLAC materials. Those wishing to see more work by this artists and other Chicago Latino artists should write LACASA Chicago at marczim@uic.edu.

The art work by Ramirez, entitled El pasado es el presente, was commissioned by the Chicago LASA Local Arrangements Committee as the program cover and general LASA impage for LASA98, with funding provided by the LASA Directorate and LACASA Chicago out of a budget provided by the Rockefeller Foundation and the Great Cities Institute of the U. of Illinois at Chicago (UIC)--and with the stipulation that the art work could serve as the identifying image for LACASA Chicago. Those wishing to contact Gamaliel Ramirez and other Chicago-Area Latino artists should contact LACASA Chicago at marczim@uic.edu.