SAN ANTONIO — The person behind some of San Antonio’s most well-known murals says he’s inspired by his culture and ancestry as he works to bring his artwork across the city.
Alan Calvo has been painting murals across San Antonio for over a decade, and said he draws on influences of his heritage to inspire his works.
“Everything that I do is inspired by the Aztecs,” Calvo said. “The colors that they used are a lot of the same exact colors you see here, like turquoise, reds, yellows, and greens.”
Calvo recently completed one of his largest murals yet, “Los Colores Del Los Nativos,” which stands on the 200 block of West Commerce. The art is inspired by the rivers of Mexico and its Indigenous people.
“I personally wanted to show what comes out of a river,” Calvo said. “All the colors, all the birds, the flowers all the food and take those colors and put it into this, and that’s basically what you have.”
Not far from Commerce Street, are more of Calvo’s murals, focusing on the icons of Latino culture. There’s the Vicente Fernandez mural under the Alameda Theatre Sign on West Houston Street, the iconic Selena mural on the side of the Alamo candy Company on West Hildebrand, and most recently, Calvo completed a mural of Bad Bunny outside Amor Cycling Studio + Fitness near Loop 410 and Broadway.
All of Calvo’s murals include some sort of cultural element, as he hopes to inspire others through his art.
“Never forget where you come from,” Calvo Said. “And to keep that going because without that, we don’t have a culture. We don’t have an identity and that’s something that we should never be stripped of.