How one Filipino American artist influenced the work of a generation of others

https://www.npr.org/2022/09/30/ [login to see] /carlos-villa-asian-art-museum-san-francisco-influence
In 1958, when the late Filipino American artist Carlos Villa was studying at the California School of Fine Arts, he asked one of his teachers where he could learn about other Filipino art.

"His teacher said to him there isn't any," said Mark Johnson, co-curator of Carlos Villa: Worlds in Collision, a retrospective of Villa's work at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco.

That response inspired Villa to go beyond his own art, and make it his mission to help other artists of color.

"His whole career was trying to focus on filling in that story both for himself and for artists in the future," said Johnson.

Villa died in 2013, but his legacy continues. As a professor at the San Francisco Art Institute for four decades and a powerful community organizer and mentor, Villa had an outsize impact on dozens of younger artists. His students included Obama portraitist Kehinde Wiley and Mission School art pioneer Barry McGee.

Villa devoted his career to uplifting others, but now he is getting his due as an artist in his own right: The exhibition at the Asian Art Museum is the first in the country to give a Filipino American artist a major retrospective.