Roberto "Beto" de la Rocha is an American painter, graphic artist, and muralist. He was born in Wilmar, California[1] to Mexican American parents. However, according to Carlos Almaraz, he claimed to be a Hasidic Jew from a Spanish Jewish family.[2] He earned his Master's of Fine Arts from California State University, Long Beach.
In 1973, he joined the influential Chicano art collective Los Four. The group, composed of Carlos Almaraz, Frank E. Romero, Gilbert "Magu" Luján, and de la Rocha, was responsible for numerous murals and public art installations in the Los Angeles area. According to Luján, he and de la Rocha emphasized "indigenous and local" aspects of Chicano art, while the other two members were more interested in the European tradition.[3] The group was also one of the first to draw mainstream attention to Chicano art, exhibiting at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1974.[4] According to Judithe Hernández, the first female member of Los Four, de la Rocha was also a "brilliant printmaker"[5], much whose imagery was drawn from "his [very fragile] mental state".[5] After a few years with the group, he suffered a mental breakdown and destroyed his paintings. According to Almaraz, "he left the group under very, very terrible circumstances. He ended up going on 40-day fast and ended up at the psychiatric ward at the L.A. County Hospital, and came down with various illnesses dealing with the fast, and never really recovered. The last I had heard was that he was burning his work and basically denouncing art as being an act of the devil and not an act of God."[2]
De la Rocha was also influential in reestablishing the traditional Mexican celebration of the Day of the Dead in Los Angeles, when he, along with Chicano artist Gronk and a few others, led a procession from Evergreen Cemetery up First Street in East Los Angeles. Gilbert Luján later said that de la Rocha "should be given credit for initiating this process—almost single-handedly. And what he did, he didn’t get funding or he didn’t ask permission from anybody, he just went and did it." [3] According to The American Prospect, he was also the art editor of the United Farm Workers publication El Malcriado.[6] In 1974, de la Rocha, along with the other founding members of Los Four, was featured in a documentary entitled Los Four/Murals of Aztlan.[7] In 1999, de la Rocha had a joint showing with Los Angeles artist John Zender at La Luz gallery in Long Beach, California[8]
Roberto de la Rocha is also well known as the father of Zack de la Rocha, the singer and lyricist in influential rap metal band Rage Against the Machine.[6]