Bio. of David Zamora Casas

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Born in San Antonio, Texas in 1960, David Zamora Casas is an energetic self-trained artist presently working as a painter, sculptor and curator of performance and installation art. He is an important curator and arts activist in the gay and American-Mexican communities.  His manifold talents have been presented in public forums since 1985, but increasingly, he has earned a reputation throughout San Antonio, Texas and the U.S. arts community as a passionate and risk taking visionary whose work champions principles of tolerance and justice through social satire.  Performances and exhibitions in Mexico City, Tulsa, Chicago, San Francisco, Santa Monica and New York have expanded the audience for Zamora Casas' work beyond a regional scope.  These venues include Esperanza Peace and Justice Center, Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center, Witte Museum, Hertzberg Circus Collection and Museum, Diverse Works and the Blue Star Art Complex.

In 1992 Zamora Casa received a New Form Regional Initiatives Grant from a Consortium of the National Endowment for the Arts, the Andy Warhol Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation.  In 1998, he received an individual Artists Grant from the City of San Antonio's Department of Arts and Cultural Affairs and in 1995 he was awarded the International Artist in Residency Program and the London Studio Program by Artspace, A Foundation for Contemporary Art.

In 1996, Casas was commissioned by the Henry B. Gonzales Convention Center Public Art Program to create a permanent grotto at the center.  In 2001, he was awarded a public art commission by the world-renowned Social and Public Art Resource Center in Venice, California to create a community mural in Los Angeles (North Hollywood).

Zamora Casas has also been invited to submit information on and examples of his work for two forthcoming publications, Contemporary Chicana and Chicano Art: Artists, Works, Culture and Education (Arizona State University) and the St. James Guide to Hispanic Artists (St. James Press).

Artwork by David Zamora Casas is included in a permanent collection at the following: San Antonio Museum of Art Permanent Collection, the Esperanza Peace and Justice Center, the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center.  Private collectors of his work include Bob And Margo Marbutt, Joe Nicholson, photographer Kathy Vargas, Josefina Méndez Negrete, Gloria Ramirez and writer Sandra Cisneros.