Frank Romero - prints and biography
By Frank Romero
Medium: Screenprint
Year: 2002
Image Size: 30 × 40
Edition: 45
Signed
In Hispaniolo, Frank Romero turns the European arrival in the Caribbean into a chaotic, darkly comic spectacle. Conquistador-like figures occupy the center of the scene while nearly naked Indigenous figures tumble, flee, and gesture around them. Swords, crosses, palm trees and churning water compress the familiar imagery of conquest into something closer to historical satire. Romero’s exuberant pinks, turquoise, greens and blues initially give the print a playful energy, but the humor has an edge: beneath the cartoon-like surface lies the unmistakable violence of colonial history.
By Frank Romero
Medium: Screenprint
Year: 1989
Image Size: 22 × 32 inches
Edition of 100
This is a reworking of an early work by Romero, featuring the view of cars on an overpass at night. Frank Romero’s City at Night captures the pulsing energy and vibrancy of Los Angeles after dark. This serigraph features his signature bold colors and expressive action, the work depicts freeways threading through the city, glowing with pinks, reds, and blues against a backdrop of illuminated skyscrapers and palm trees. Romero’s vision of the urban landscape is both celebratory and symbolic: the car culture, neon lights, and modern architecture become emblems of the Chicano experience in L.A., where mobility, community, and place are woven together in vivid narratives. The rhythmic composition of cars, roads, and buildings reflects the constant motion and dynamism of the city.
As a central figure in the Chicano art movement, Romero has long chronicled the life, histories, and visual culture of Southern California. In City at Night, his playful yet poignant use of color and form transforms the urban sprawl into a dreamlike environment—simultaneously familiar and fantastical. The painting situates the viewer in a landscape where freeways are elevated to mythic structures, emblematic of both progress and division. By reimagining the city through a Chicano lens, Romero asserts cultural presence and identity within spaces often associated with anonymity, speed, and transience. The result is a powerful reflection on belonging, movement, and the layered realities of life in Los Angeles.
By Frank Romero
Medium: carved wooden sculpture of Vintage car - Oil painted
Year: 2025
Image Size: 15 × 6 x 2 in.
Unnumbered Edition of 12
In this hand-carved wooden vintage car sculpture, Frank Romero translates his longstanding fascination with automobiles into a compact three-dimensional work. The rounded body and upright passenger compartment suggest an earlier generation of American car design, but Romero treats the form freely rather than as a literal model. Broad strokes of oil paint in turquoise, ochre, green, pink, red and pale blue move across the carved surface, with silver accents and black wheels adding graphic definition. The result has the immediacy of a handmade folk object while remaining unmistakably connected to Romero's colorful vision of Southern California car culture.
By Frank Romero
Medium: carved wooden sculpture of Vintage car - Oil painted
Year: 2025
Image Size:
Unnumbered Edition of 12
Frank Romero brings one of the central motifs of his art - the automobile - into three dimensions with this hand-carved wooden sculpture of a vintage car. The elongated body and pronounced tail fins recall the exuberant styling of mid-century American automobiles, while Romero covers the surface with loose, brightly colored passages of oil paint in pink, green, yellow, turquoise, ochre and red. Silver-painted details and black wheels complete the object. Both sculpture and painting, the work transforms the car from a familiar emblem of Los Angeles culture into a playful, highly individual object.
By Frank Romero
Medium: Screenprint
Year: 2008
Image Size: 20 x 53 inches
Frank Romero’s Going to the Olympics is a vibrant serigraph that celebrates both Los Angeles culture and the spirit of the Olympic Games. With his signature bold palette and playful style, Romero fills the composition with colorful cars cruising beneath rows of palm trees, each topped with radiant hearts. Above, iconic imagery—from galloping horses to a blimp—evokes festivity, speed, and spectacle. The work radiates energy, joy, and movement, reflecting both the car-centered life of Southern California and the excitement that surrounded the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, a landmark moment for the city and its communities.
By Frank Romero
Medium: Screenprint
Year: 2012
Size: 40 × 26 in.
Frank Romero's Untitled (Vase With Flowers) transforms a simple vase of flowers into a bold study in color and gesture. Red and purple blossoms rise from a striped green vessel against an intense orange ground, with loose brushlike marks surrounding the central image. The simplified forms, visible layering of color and spontaneous-looking marks give the print the directness and vitality associated with Romero's work.
By Frank Romero
Medium: Screenprint
Image Size: 16 x 22 inches
Edition: AP 3/7
Year: 2004
Frank Romero’s Starry Night is a vibrant serigraph that reimagines Van Gogh’s iconic sky through the lens of Los Angeles car culture. A glowing red car, a recurring motif in Romero’s work, cruises beneath a night sky filled with golden stars, blending everyday life with a sense of wonder and celebration.
As a leading figure of the Chicano art movement, Romero infuses the piece with both cultural pride and artistic playfulness. Starry Night captures the joy of community, the centrality of the car in Southern California life, and the artist’s signature ability to merge high art references with Chicano identity.
By Frank Romero
Medium: Digital Archival Print
Image Size: 13.5 × 35 inches
Edition Size: 100
The Pleasantville Color Cartoon was created by the artist as the final study for the Frank Romero mural that appears in the 1998 Academy Award nominated film Pleasantville starring Jeffrey Daniels, Tobey McGuire and Reese Witherspoon, written and directed by Gary Ross. In the black and white movie, the introduction of Frank’s mural, with its glorious colors and images that echo the themes of the film, is a marvelous highlight. The 30 ft by 10 ft mural is part of MOLAA’s collection. The Pleasantville Color Cartoon captures all the murals vibrancy.
By Frank Romero
Medium: Screenprint on paper with varnish
Year: 2020
Size: 30 × 40 in.
Frank Romero’s Sunflowers (Large) transforms a traditional floral still life through his characteristically exuberant color and energetic mark-making. A cluster of brilliant yellow sunflowers fills the composition, rising from a loosely rendered vessel against a deep blue ground. The vase itself becomes nearly abstract, built from overlapping passages of green, red, blue and black.
By Frank Romero
Medium: Screenprint
Year: 1998
Image Size: 16 x 22 inches
Edition: 69
By Frank Romero
Medium: Screenprint
Year: 2017
Size: 30 in. × 22 in.
This silkscreen print by Chicano artist Frank Romero exemplifies his fluid, expressive line work and culturally rooted subject matter. The image portrays a nude female figure with her arms raised above her head, rendered in a minimalist, contour-drawing style.
Romero's characteristic approach — blending figuration with abstraction — is evident in the simplified anatomy and focus on the expressive power of line rather than shading or detail. The facial expression, though stylized, is evocative and introspective, adding emotional depth to the composition.
By Frank Romero
Medium: Screenprint
Image Size: 30 × 23 inches
Year: 2024
Edition: 135
By Frank Romero
Medium: Unique stencil painting (handmade paper from Bhutan)
Year: 2006
Image Size: 16 x 22 inches
By Frank Romero
Medium: Unique stencil painting (handmade paper from Bhutan)
Year: 2006
Image Size: 16 x 22 inches
By Frank Romero
Medium: Screenprint
Year: 2018
Image Size: 10 x 28 inches
Edition: 60
Created as a fundraiser for the Sidestreet Project in Pasadena, CA.
By Frank Romero
Medium: Unique stencil painting (handmade paper from Bhutan)
Year: 2006
Image Size: 16 x 22 inches
By Frank Romero
Medium: Unique stencil painting (handmade paper from Bhutan)
Year: 2004
Image Size: 16 x 22 inches
Edition of 20 unique prints
By Frank Romero
Medium: Screenprint
Image Size: 17 x 17 inches
Edition Size: 60
Year: 2012
By Frank Romero
Medium: Screenprint
Image Size: 19 x 28 inches
Year: 2010
Edition Size: 70
By Frank Romero and Sonia Romero
Medium: Screenprint, 8 colors, hand pulled
Year: 2013
Image Size: 28 x 40 in.
Signed and Numbered Edition: 75
Family Quilt wasacquired by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s permanent collection. This print was a collaboration by father Frank Romero and his daughter, Sonia Romero. Printed at Self Help Graphics and Art.
See more prints by Sonia Romero.
By Frank Romero
Medium: Screenprint
Image Size: 12 x 12 inches
Edition size: 12
Year” 2001
By Frank Romero
Medium: Unique stencil painting (handmade paper from Bhutan)
Year: 2000
Image Size: 22 x 16 inches
Edition of 20 unique prints
Frank Romero
Biography
Frank Romero (b. 1941) is a leading figure in the Chicano art movement, known for vibrant paintings, murals, and prints celebrating and chronicling Chicano culture. A native of East Los Angeles, Romero has spent more than fifty years as a dedicated member of the Los Angeles arts community.
In the 1970s, he joined Carlos Almaraz, Gilbert Luján, and Beto de la Rocha to form Los Four, whose landmark 1974 exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art was the first major museum exhibition devoted to Chicano art.
Romero's screenprints, lithographs, and etchings share the saturated color, stylized forms, and strong outlines of his larger works. Los Angeles freeways, automobiles, palm trees, flowers, and figures recur throughout his prints, alongside imagery addressing protest, civil rights, and the experiences of Chicano communities.
Printmaking has been central to Romero's practice and to his belief that art should reach a broad audience. His collaborations with community workshops, particularly Self Help Graphics & Art, reflect that commitment. His work is held in major public and private collections throughout the United States.
Related Chicano printmakers
Leo Limón
Xavier Viramontes
By Frank Romero, Gilbert "Magu" Lujan, and Beto de la Rocha
Medium: Screenprint
Image Size: 40 x 32.25 inches
Year: 1994
Edition: 100
The “20 Year Anniversary Print (Homage to Carlos Almaraz)” by Frank Romero, Gilbert “Magú” Luján, and Roberto “Beto” de la Rocha is tribute to their fellow Los Four member Carlos Almaraz, who passed away in 1989. Bursting with color, graffiti-like energy, and symbolic imagery, the print encapsulates the spirit of the Chicano art movement and the enduring legacy of Almaraz’s contributions. At its center blazes a fiery heart, recalling both sacred iconography and street mural aesthetics, a motif that Almaraz himself often explored in his expressive, emotional works. The heart radiates with urgency and vitality, evoking love, struggle, and resilience at once.
Created two decades after the group’s pivotal 1974 exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, this print also celebrates Los Four’s historic achievement in bringing Chicano art into mainstream recognition. More than just an anniversary marker, the work is an affirmation of cultural pride, memory, and artistic brotherhood. By fusing sacred symbols, personal homages, and public language, Romero, Luján, and de la Rocha honor both the radical creativity and the enduring impact of Carlos Almaraz, ensuring his presence continues to blaze at the heart of Chicano art.
By Frank Romero
Medium: Screenprint
Image Size: 38 x 26 inches
Year: 2012
Edition: 140
By Frank Romero
Medium: Screenprint, hand-pulled
Image Size: 32 x 21.5 inches
Year: 2016
By Frank Romero
Medium: Screenprint
Image Size: 22 x 16 inches
Edition size: 69
Circa 2006
By Frank Romero
Medium: Screenprint
Year: 2025
Image Size: 28 × 42 inches
Edition of 30
Frank Romero's Flying Saucer over Roswell, New Mexico brings his exuberant visual language to the mythology of the American Southwest. Against a dark, star-filled sky, brightly colored cars travel through a desert landscape of cacti and rugged hills while two flying saucers hover overhead. Romero combines familiar Southwestern imagery, automobile culture, and the legendary Roswell UFO story in a lively composition built from broad, energetic marks and saturated color.