“Testament of the Spirit” at Pasadena Museum of California Art encompasses over 60 paintings that Eduardo Carrillo (1937-1997) produced over a 40-year period. While traversing this engrossing retrospective, one feels as though perusing an eclectic panoply of peepholes into the quotidian life and imaginary worlds of the Chicano painter, whose practice spanned a wide array of subjects, genres and media. For all its diversity, his work unites in idiosyncratic stylization, emotive luminosity, and invocation of spiritual and cultural symbolism. Instead of a tight chronologic progression, the multifarious show is organized around groupings of related paintings. Not knowing what to expect results in felicitous surprises. Progressing through the show, you gather how Carrillo’s early emulation of Old Masters and visionary European painting transitioned to his later, more straightforward figuration exuding the influence of Mexican vernacular styles. Among his late work, Tio Beto on the Wall (1988) casts a bricklayer as heroic giant. Most impressive are his visionary scenes, many of which equal the skill and creativity of Surrealist predecessors while presaging edgy contemporary painting. It’s hard to believe that Las Tropicanas (1972-73) is nearly fifty years old, so modern it looks alongside Testament of the Holy Spirit (1971) and Woman Holding Serpent (1975, pictured above), two contemplative scenes featuring snakes amid radiance. The exhibition culminates in its magnum opus, Chicano History (1970), a huge, captivating panoramic mural executed in collaboration with three other artists. Displayed for the first time since 1991, this piece alone makes the show worth attending.

Pasadena Museum of California Art
490 E. Union Street
Pasadena, CA 91101
Show runs through Jun. 3
Admission fees apply