Radical Artists Brush Aside Rules to Paint Downtown Picasso Mural

Like a flashback to a more defiant period of art, Mario Torero, Alex Martinez and three others quietly climbed to the roof of a downtown San Diego building adjoining the old Carnation dairy plant late one night last December.

Using a slide projector, they fired onto the dairy building an image of the “Eyes of Picasso,” a mural Torero had once painted on a building at 3rd Avenue and F Street.

Then, they erected a scaffold they had rented and, using felt pens, quickly outlined the image.

For the next two days, Torero and Martinez, along with fellow artists Dushon Pomophoy, Ruben Seja and Keiko Jinno, painted a second “Eyes of Picasso.” Then they disassembled their gear and got out of there.

“No molestations,” said Martinez this week, briefly describing their experience in painting a brilliantly colored mural on a building they neither owned nor had permission to paint.

Quite the contrary, the two men said they drew inspiration from a group chanting “La Raza” in a nearby Chicano parade and by verbal encouragement given from the homeless who frequent a center near the plant at 11th Avenue and J Street.

“We’re revolutionaries for art,” said Torero, squinting as Tuesday’s bright sun reflected off his sunglasses and paint-splattered khaki shirt.

A baseball cap with the inscription “El Nino Para La Paz”--or the child for peace--only half protected his tan face and long black and gray hair from the sun’s rays.

“We take action into our own hands when we feel it would benefit the community,” he added.

One of California’s best known muralists, Torero’s has painted murals in San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco as well as Chicago, St. Paul, Minn., Portland, Ore., and Corpus Christi, Tex.

Following a trail of Torero murals through San Diego would take one through Barrio Logan’s Chicano Park, San Diego State University’s Aztec Center and the Logan Heights branch of the San Diego Library.

He’s painted a mural of Martin Luther King Jr. at Christ the King Catholic Church on 32nd Street and, as part of the city schools’ Young at Art program, a mural of the first president with students from George Washington Elementary School.

Torero was also one of the major forces in painting the Centro Cultural de la Raza in Balboa Park’s Ford Building.

In December, the City Council voted to ratify the Carnation property as a historic landmark after the designation was challenged by a group of real estate developers.

The artistic crew moved quickly to paint the mural shortly thereafter, Torero said.

The original mural, which Torero also helped paint, once adorned the Knights of Pythias Building at 3rd Avenue and F Street, but was demolished in 1982 to make room for Horton Plaza.

The building housed a multicultural, multimedia arts center that has since lost funding, said Torero, a onetime in-house muralist for the center.

It is just such a center for multicultural arts that these artists would like to reestablish at the old plant.

“It is still a matter of months before we will have the possibility of acquiring (the property),” said architect Wayne Buss, who also heads ReinCarnation Inc., one of several groups working together to obtain the old Carnation plant.

Buss said his firm is trying to work out a restoration plan with the property’s owner that would include 55,000 feet of lofts, rehearsal space, a public gallery, and an outdoor performance park.

As for Torero, his 1988 appointment to the San Diego City Commission of Arts and Culture has not changed his radical style of bringing art to the streets of the city.

“Do you think the city was going to give it to us,” he asked of the 11th Avenue property. “Give us their OK?” he continued. “We can’t wait for OKs. We have to do it ourselves.”

The 40-foot by 60-foot mural simply but effectively mirrors its name. Two dark-colored eyes are set about 7 feet apart.

Tens of thunderbolt-type lines employing “every color in the spectrum” form Picasso’s forehead four stories high.

Torero and Martinez described themselves as part of a movement to make art more accessible.

The theory is that, without a dime, you can pass 11th Avenue and J Street and appreciate the Eyes of Picasso mural, as it brightens an otherwise neglected section of downtown warehouses and the like.