How Murals and Tattoos in the Denver Area are Influenced by the Chicano Art Movement
The city of Denver, Colorado, has always been considered to have a “colorful” history, but in 2025, people are starting to notice how art in Denver has been constantly evolving, intertwining mediums, and impacting communities. Street art in Denver has been prolific since the 1970s, spearheaded by the Chicano/a/x communities of the city. With initial art forms coming from writers (street graffiti artists), the mural scene has also gained extreme popularity and recognition in many Denver neighborhoods.
The Denver muralist movement can be highly credited to Emanuel Martinez in the 1970s, who brought the muralist movement with him from Mexico after experiencing their post-revolutionary art movement firsthand, he was taught by another prolific artist David Alfaro Siqueiros, who is the one that initially motivated Martinez to bring the powerful use of activism through art to his community in Denver. This happened when vibrant art that could not be ignored was needed most.
The rise of the Chicano Movement, or El Movimiento, initially led by Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta, and Rosalio Munoz on the West Coast in the 1960s and 70s, was also extremely alive in Denver at the time, which was considered the urban center of the Chicano Movement for Colorado. The influence of taking back roots, battling colonization efforts, fighting for systemic equality, and the ongoing need for an anti-racist movement inspired many of Denver’s murals at the time. It was a way for many Chicano/a/x artists in Denver to convey their experience living in a country that was determined to oppress and separate them from their rights. Many of the murals being created today still focus on connecting with the indigenous roots of the Chicano/a/x community in modern spaces where their presence is being increasingly erased by gentrification, as well as combatting the lack of knowledge that people moving to Denver have about the deep roots of the city’s history.
The Chicano movement has an equally prolific history in the realm of tattooing as well, serving as a foundation for many newer techniques used by artists today, such as fine line tattoos, realism, black and grey, and the art of single-needle tattoos with homemade machines. The history of Chicano tattooing first began in the prison system in the 1940s and 50s within the Pachuco gang culture, becoming common for inmates to practice with homemade machines, single sewing needles and India ink, consistently perfecting their skills through passing time within cells across the states of California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas initially.
The Chicano tattooing movement started through detailing life experiences through highly detailed, meaningful images and script. These tattoos often featured highly realistic images of loved ones, the Virgin de Guadalupe, sugar skulls, and Aztec art influences contributed to the fact that Chicano tattoos were meant to claim important facets of the person's identity, and not just be a simple piece to get for fun or aesthetic purposes. These tattoos have deep cultural meanings, with unbelievable artistic styles, serving as personalized votives to each person’s lived experience and an undeniable expression of cultural pride.
The Chicano art style has intersected with multiple mediums throughout time. With the influences of the Chicano tattoo style intertwining with lowrider culture and its airbrush and hand-painted art, it's not surprising to know that many Chicano/a/x tattoo artists in the Denver area are using their talents to express themselves with murals throughout the city. Cultural significance is a deep part of the respect that others have for these murals, even within the writer (or graffiti) communities. Denver murals aren't just “art on walls,” they are placed within a deep cultural context of civil rights movements, and reclaiming spaces throughout the city as part of Chicano history.
That being said, it is obvious to see that some murals in Denver are purely commercial. They are often commissioned by businesses to “beautify” a space rather than bring meaning to it, and these murals are the ones that get vandalized the most, while those with obvious cultural significance, Chicano or not, are mostly protected by a level of respect that the community has for them. As more and more tattoo artists switch from their ink to the paintbrush for murals that create an equal sense of significance and identity that their tattoos do, the history of the Chicano culture behind this level of art and radical expression is not meant to be missed.
