Jose Cruz was born the youngest of three siblings in the sleepy, sleazy bordertown of Pinche Laredo, Mexico and immigrated by Greyhound Bus in the 60’s to Dallas, Texas.
Jose lived in the barrios of Little Mexico and the West Dallas Projects. Being a class clown with a high A-B average, his teachers couldn’t figure out what to do with him. He graduated with honors from Skyline High School with a major in Commercial Art. After high school he made art history at TCU as the only Double Dropout on the Dean’s List of Academic Scholars, once in 1973-1975 and again in 2002-2003. After the first fiasco, he had a successful career as the only Chicano Illustrator in the United States of America from 1975 till 1992, when the US declared war on all illustrators with the infusion of A.I., aka the PC Mac.
Jose became an unofficial Mayan Jungle adventurer in search of the unbeaten path to the Mayan Ruins in the Yucatan by ducking and dodging Gun Runners, Zapatistas, and Federales. His motto was “Wing it or Die!” To clear his debts to “La Sociedad” and recover his independence, he became a semi-pro wrestler under the persona of the Masked Lucha Libre Star, El Cripo for the bordertowns’ Lucha Libre and Cock Fights Circuit.
Upon his return to the US in the late 90’s, he proclaimed himself The King of Neo-Pop Art to further his life as a painter and distance himself from his checkered past. He has been in self-exile developing a discipline of painting known as Contra-ceptual Art, which incorporates his absolute formula:
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Less is More and More is Less, more or less!
Jose is totally inspired by anything that evokes Madness, Chaos, and Defiance but with a quantum sprinkle of artistic purpose.
