Judithe Hernández

Judithe Hernández (Los Angeles, born 1948) is an American visual artist of Mexican descent associated with the Chicano art movement and the Los Angeles mural tradition. She is notable as one of the few women in the Chicano artist collectives of the 1970s and for giving voice to questions of identity, gender and politics in her work.

She studied at the Otis Art Institute on a scholarship, where she took drawing classes with Charles White, who had a lasting influence on her development. In 1974 she joined Los Four, the collective completed by Carlos Almaraz, Frank E. Romero, Robert de la Rocha and Gilbert Luján. During the 1970s she took part in mural projects and in organizations of Chicano artists across California.

From the 1980s her work centred mainly on paper, especially pastel, with imagery drawing on indigenous sources and a reflection on gender roles. She lived in Chicago for more than twenty-five years before returning to Los Angeles in 2010. Her exhibition La Vida Sobre Papel at the National Museum of Mexican Art included a series on the murders of women in Ciudad Juárez.

Her best-known public work is L.A. Sonata, a set of mosaic glass panels at the Downtown Santa Monica station of the Expo Line. Her work has entered collections such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York and has been included in exhibitions on Latino art in the United States.