Enrique Chagoya was born in Mexico City in 1953.
Chagoya studied economics at the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Mexico City in 1975. As a student, he was sent to work on rural development projects, an experience that strengthened his interest in political and social activism. He relocated to Veracruz and directed a team focused on rural-development projects, a time he describes as “an incredible growing experience…[that] made me form strong views on what was happening outside in the world.” This growing political awareness would later surface in Chagoya’s art. In 1977, Chagoya and his first wife immigrated to the United States, where he worked as a free-lance illustrator and graphic designer and for a time, in 1977, with farm laborers in Texas. At age 26, Chagoya moved to Berkeley, California and began working as a free-lance illustrator and graphic designer.
In 1984, he earned a BFA at the SF Art Institute and in 1987 an MFA at UC Berkeley. He lives in San Francisco where he also shows at the Anglim Gilbert Gallery and teaches art at Stanford University, where he received the Dean's Award in the Humanities in 1998. He has been honored by the National Endowment for the Arts and in 1995 won a Monet fellowship.
His controversial 2003 artwork “The Misadventures of the Romantic Cannibals”, which portrays Jesus, and possibly other religious figures, in a context of ambiguous sexual content, is part of 10-artist exhibit called “The Legend of Bud Shark and His Indelible Ink” which is on display in a city-run art museum in Loveland, Colorado. The copy on exhibit in Loveland, one of a limited edition of 30 lithographs, was destroyed by a woman wielding a crowbar on October 6, 2010. According to the artist the work is a commentary on the Catholic sex abuse cases.
