Title: Alex Donis Collection,

Date (inclusive): 1968 - 2007

Collection number: 108

Creator: Donis, Alex 1958-

Extent: 14 linear Feet

Repository: University of California, Los Angeles. Library. Chicano Studies Research Center, UCLA

Abstract: Paintings, sketches, videos, papers and photographs relating to the career of the Santa Monica based artist, Alex Donis. Researchers who would like to indicate errors of fact or omissions in this finding aid can contact the research center at www.chicano.ucla.edu

Physical location: CSRC Room 144

Language of Material: Collection materials in English

Collection is open for research. To view the collection or any part of it, you must fill out our Archival Research Application. http://www.chicano.ucla.edu/library/archival_research_app.shtml

[Identification of item], Alex Donis Collection, 108, Chicano Studies Research Center, UCLA, University of California, Los Angeles.

This collection was donated by Alex Donis to the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center Library Archive. Deed on file at the archive office.

Alex Donis is a Los Angeles-based visual artist whose work examines and redefines the boundaries set within religion, politics, race, and sexuality. Interested in toppling societies' relationship to icons, his work is often influenced by a tri-cultural (Pop, Latin & Queer) experience. He has worked extensively in a variety of media including painting, installation, video, and works on paper. He was born in 1964 in Chicago, IL and was educated at a Catholic school in East Los Angeles, an east-coast prep school in Massachusetts, and a military academy on the southern coast of Guatemala. He received his undergraduate degree at California State University, Long Beach and his graduate degree from Otis College of Art & Design. Donis has exhibited his work at the Armand Hammer Museum of Art & Culture; the Santa Monica Museum of Art; the Geffen Contemporary (MoCA); the Laguna Museum of Art, Laguna Beach; Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE); the Mexican Museum, San Francisco; Randolph Street Gallery, Chicago; Galeria de la Raza, San Francisco; Pretoria Arts Museum, South Africa; and Artspace, Sydney Australia. His work was recently included in the landmark exhibition "Made in California: Art, Image, & Identity 1900-2000" at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. His work has been featured in FlashArt International, Artweek, the Los Angeles Times, La Opinion, the Chicago Tribune, The San Francisco Chronicle, and the Sydney Morning Herald. His work will be part of the three volume anthology "Chicano/Chicana Art in the United States" published by the Bilingual Press of the University of Arizona, Phoenix. Alex has also been awarded residencies at the University of Texas, Austin; the Brandywine Institute, Philadelphia; and Artspace, Sydney, Australia. Donis has taught drawing and painting at the Watts Towers Arts Center, the J. Paul Getty Museum, and Crossroads School for Arts & Sciences. He is currently an artist in residence at the 18th Street Arts Complex in Santa Monica.

About Alex: His parents Francisco and Ana Maria Donis were both from Guatemala and immigrated to Chicago Illinois, where Alex was born in the late 1950s. They moved their family to Los Angeles in 1967 where his mother mom worked as a nurse for LA County and his father had a restaurant services company. They retires to travel and consider themselves "somewhat" socialistic in their worldviews.

The Gronk Papers

The CARA Chicano Arts: Resistance and Affirmation Papers

Self Help Graphics Research Papers

The following terms have been used to index the description of this collection in the library's online public access catalog.