Mel Casas

Casas was born in El Paso, Texas His father's love of drawing influenced Casas to start drawing, and, as a young man, he decided to become an artist. and his father insisted it was his duty to serve. Casas went to graduate school in Mexico, and he received a MFA from the University of the Americas in Mexico City in 1958. == Academic and Art Careers ==

Casas received an all-level certificate to teach in Texas. and after that, he received a job offer at San Antonio College. In its abbreviated form, C/S, it is commonly used to protect murals from defacement. The art group adopted the name "Con Safo" at Casas' suggestion on December 19, 1971, at which time Casas presented his "Brown Paper Report," which lists 22 "mostly sardonic definitions" for the term Con Safo. Casas taught for 29 years at San Antonio College As a fellow artist, he was good at asking critical questions of the work of others and encouraging them to submit their work to exhibitions and competitions. == Personal life ==

Casas had a two-year battle with cancer. He died in his home with his family and his wife of 35 years, Grace Casas. He and Grace had one child, Bruce. With his first wife, Maria, Mel had four children: Alfredo, Ingrid, Mike and Sonya. == Artistic Practice ==

Casas was first recognized for his work in an abstract expressionist style, Casas came to feel that his abstract work was too "pretty," and that it was an inappropriate artistic language for him. He began transitioning to a representational style in 1965, when he began his Humanscape series. The Humanscape Cycle of Paintings, 1965-1989 The 153 paintings that make up the Humanscape series were inspired by a "glimpse of a drive-in movie screen." Curator Ruben C. Cordova organized four Humanscape exhibitions with approximately half of the Humanscape paintings in 2015. Critic Dan Goddard called the exhibitions "a spectacular multi-exhibit tribute tracing almost the entire progression of Casas' 150 Humanscape paintings from 1965 to 1989." In the first group, from 1965 through 1967, Casas made depictions of audience members watching films at drive-in cinemas and conventional movie theaters, characterized as "psychologically intense, somewhat blurry dreamscapes." Finally, from 1982 through 1989, the last group of Humanscapes treated what Casas called Southwestern clichés. His incorporation of imagery from Mexican and Pre-Columbian iconography in conjunction with pop art in Humanscape 62 was unique. which was an intended effect, since Casas stated: "As a matter of fact, my paintings are totally confrontational." and American History Does not Begin with the White Man: Indigenous Themes in the Work of Mel Casas. The latter accompanied an exhibition of the same name mounted at Bihl Haus for San Antonio's Tricentennial. In his later years, Casas didn't like talking about his art, and he largely ceased exhibiting, even turning down offers of major exhibitions. At the McNay Art Museum in San Antonio, Mel Casas: Human (September 20, 2018 – January 6, 2019) featured six Humanscape paintings and eight of Casas' art boxes. Mel Casas: Human was mounted in conjunction with the exhibition Pop América, 1965–1975. == Further reading ==