Balmy Alley (formally Balmy Street) is a one-block-long

alley An alley or alleyway is a narrow lane, footpath, path, or passageway, often reserved for pedestrians, which usually runs between, behind, or within buildings in towns and cities. It is also a rear access or service road (back lane), or a path, w ...

that is home to the most concentrated collection of murals in the city of

San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

. It is located in the south central portion of the Inner Mission District in Calle 24 between 24th Street and Garfield Square. Since 1973, most buildings on the street have been decorated with a

mural A mural is any piece of Graphic arts, graphic artwork that is painted or applied directly to a wall, ceiling or other permanent substrate. Mural techniques include fresco, mosaic, graffiti and marouflage. Word mural in art The word ''mural'' ...

History

The earliest murals in the alley date to 1972, painted by Mia Galivez and children in a local child care center. Artists Patricia Rodriquez and Graciela Carillo had rented an apartment on Balmy Alley and painted their first mural in the Alley, a jungle-underwater scene, in 1973. Their two-woman team soon expanded and became known as '' Las Mujeres Muralistas''. Fellow member Irene Perez painted her own mural on the alley in 1973, depicting two back-to-back figures painting flutes. In 1984, in a second significant wave of murals in the alley, Ray Patlan spearheaded the PLACA project to install murals throughout the alley featuring the common theme of a celebration of indigenous Central American cultures and a protest of US intervention in Central America. Topics of the murals included the

Nicaraguan revolution The Nicaraguan Revolution () began with rising opposition to the Somoza dictatorship in the 1960s and 1970s, the ouster of the dictatorship in 1978–79, and fighting between the government and the Contras from 1981 to 1990. The revolution r ...

Óscar Romero Óscar Arnulfo Romero y Galdámez (15 August 1917 – 24 March 1980) was a prelate of the Catholic Church in El Salvador. He served as Auxiliary Bishop of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of San Salvador, Archdiocese of San Salvador, the Titular ...

, and the

Guatemalan civil war The Guatemalan Civil War was fought from 1960 to 1996 between the government of Guatemala and various Left-wing politics, leftist rebel groups. The Guatemalan government forces committed Guatemalan genocide, genocide against the Maya population o ...

. This culminated in the addition of twenty-seven murals during the summer of 1985, funded in part by a grant of $2,500 from the Zellerbach Foundation. This art project proved influential, inspiring the La Lucha Continua Art Park/La Lucha Mural Park in New York City the following year. Painting continues regularly in the alley, including new murals about gentrification and police harassment in 2012 and a restoration of one of the PLACA murals in 2014. Besides those listed above, artists who have produced murals in the alley include Juana Alicia, Susan Kelk Cervantes, Marta Ayala, Brooke Francher, Miranda Bergman, Osha Neuman, Neil Mackinnon, Carlos Loarca, Xochitl Nevel-Guerrero, and

Sirron Norris Sirron Norris is an American illustrator, muralist, and arts educator. He is known for his work on the Fox Broadcasting Company, FOX animated television show ''Bob's Burgers'' and for numerous cartoon-style public murals, including ones at Balmy A ...

Influence

The Balmy Alley murals have been described, along with San Diego's

Chicano Park Chicano Park is a park located beneath the San Diego–Coronado Bridge in Barrio Logan, San Diego, Barrio Logan, a predominantly Chicano or Mexican American and Mexico, Mexican-migrant community in central San Diego, California. The park is ho ...

and Los Angeles' Estrada Courts, as a leading example of mural environments that reclaim spaces for

Chicano Chicano (masculine form) or Chicana (feminine form) is an ethnic identity for Mexican Americans that emerged from the Chicano Movement. In the 1960s, ''Chicano'' was widely reclaimed among Hispanics in the building of a movement toward politic ...

s and give expression to a history of Chicano displacement and marginalization. The mural grouping in the alley is internationally recognized, both as an exemplar of activist art and as a tourist destination.

Context

The

Mission District The Mission District ( Spanish: ''Distrito de la Misión''), commonly known as the Mission ( Spanish: ''La Misión''), is a neighborhood in San Francisco, California. One of the oldest neighborhoods in San Francisco, the Mission District's name ...

has San Francisco's densest concentration of murals, often along political themes, sometimes described jointly as the "Mission School" of muralism. Balmy Alley is often cited as the leading concentration within the Mission. Nearby

Clarion Alley Clarion Alley is a small street between Mission and Valencia Streets and 17th and 18th Streets in the Mission District in San Francisco, California. It is notable for the murals painted by the Clarion Alley Mural Project. History Originally c ...

, another mural grouping by local artists, was inspired by Balmy Alley.

References

External links

San Francisco Mural Arts gallery of works in Balmy Alley

Balmy Alley website
{{coord, 37.751777, -122.412406, type:landmark_region:US_dim:200, format=dms, display=title Murals in San Francisco Mission District, San Francisco Streets in San Francisco

History

Influence

Context

See also

References

External links