(b. Mexico City, Mexico, 1941; d. 1989).
Carlos Almaraz moved from Mexico at the age of one, lived in Chicago until he was nine and then moved to Los Angeles. After attending Loyola, Cal State Los Angeles and UC Los Angeles, he earned an M.F.A. from Otis Art Institute in 1974. For five years in New York he studied abstract Expressionism, minimalism, conceptualism, and performance art. Dissatisfied with the New York art scene, he returned to Los Angeles.
After a near death experience and the death of his younger brother, Almaraz began to engage in Chicano politics and street art. "I decided to become involved with social issues and using the vehicle of the mural as the means by which I could. I could try to redeem my brother's life and try to reconstruct my reality through my work in murals."
His pastels, serigraphs, etchings, paintings, murals, poems and philosophical ideas reveal his belief that "Art is a record , a document, that you leave behind showing what
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