He is best known for his photorealist paintings from the late 1970s and early 1980s, and for his large-scale mosaic murals made out of ceramic tiles, which he produced later in his career.
The two were married in New Braunfels and lived there until economic pressures and racial tensions compelled the family to undertaken a reverse migration to Monterrey, Mexico.
He attended Fox Tech High School where a teacher named Katherine Alsup helped him obtain a scholarship in 1965 to study in New York City at the Art Student's League.
[1][2] His femur was shattered and an artery was severed by a sniper's bullet, and the explosion left him with ten shrapnel wounds due to being thrown twenty to thirty feet.
[1][2] As he lay injured, he began to think about what was important in his life; he vowed that if he lived, he would return home to San Antonio and paint his family and community.
Armando Albarran, a fellow veteran who had both of his legs amputated due to war wounds, encouraged Treviño to paint with his left hand.
[1] Particularly under Mel Casas' tutelage, Treviño quickly trained his left hand, first by making highly experimental works in 1969.
[1] Treviño earned a BA in Art from Our lady of the Lake University in 1974, where he studied with Sisters Tharsilla Fuchs and Ethel Marie Corne.
[1] Treviño became famous for his outdoor tile mosaics that depicted the Chicano community, culture, and history, as well as the city's Mexican heritage.
The wounds of the Vietnam war, which took so many of his friends and neighbors from the Westside of San Antonio, never left him, but he used those scars to bring healing to millions of people.
"[4] While studying in New York, where Treviño first worked with a live model, his portraits were made in a painterly technique, in emulation of his teacher, the eminent portraitist William F. Draper.
[1] The Spirit of Healing, his 93-ft. high mosaic mural (1995–97) features 70 different colors of tile, but "the scale and the medium of this work necessitated substantially different effects than the detailed verisimilitude of Treviño’s photorealist paintings".
[1] Treviño's first mural-sized work was Mi Vida, 1971–72, painted on the bedroom wall of his home at West Mistletoe Avenue, San Antonio.
[2][13] The mural's central element is the face of a beautiful young woman, partially obscured by a monumental rendition of Treviño's prosthetic limb from which his Purple Heart medal is suspended.
[2] "Pop Art meets Surrealism," wrote curator Ruben C. Cordova in the curatorial statement printed in the brochure.
[18] Melissa Ho, curator of the Smithsonian exhibition, noted: "Trevino's haunting, hallucinatory work anchored the final gallery of the show, stopping visitors in their tracks.
[20] Cordova notes how quickly Treviño mastered a new kind of painting with his left hand: "what's most amazing to me is how strong his works were immediately after losing his arm.
[1] La Historia Chicana (1972–74), painted on the invitation of Our Lady of the Lake University’s Mexican-American Student Association, was done in the recreation room.
Restaurateur Jorge Cortez is deeply impressed by what he calls "Treviño’s portraits of buildings", especially El Alameda (1980), one of San Antonio's most historic theaters.
[1] Treviño liked film, and he included signage from six important cinemas in his Main Library Mural of 1995, which is set during World War II.
So I included a statue of San Antonio (St. Anthony) and candles and lights and pictures of people like General McDermott, Cleto Rodríguez, a Congressional Medal of Honor recipient, and Emma Tenayuca, the labor organizer.
Here Treviño references folk healing traditions, as represented by the Casa Mireles botánica and its proprietress, who supplied herbal remedies.
In this piece, Treviño "monumentalized a Virgin of Guadalupe votive candle, which projects from the 40-foot high building like a miraculous apparition".
[1] Our Lady of Guadalupe is a popular image on prayer candles, and they are prominent in Mexican American and Chicano households, as well as Catholic churches.
According to the artist, the site was a dark and dangerous corner before he created his Veladora, which he says "made it a safer place by putting this icon there".
[15] The Chapa Lions (2003) is a mosaic mural found on the side of a downtown Goodwill San Antonio location, on Santa Rosa Street, facing Market Square.
[1][6] Treviño's unconventional portrait of labor leader César Chávez, which pictures him in the manner of a Mexican movie poster, was painted in 2006.
[1] According to the curator's statement, Jesse Treviño: Mi Vida was the artist's "first comprehensive retrospective", with "drawings, paintings, sketches for public commissions, artifacts, documents, and a mural... exhibited together for the first time".
[15] Reporter Elaine Ayala said of this exhibition: "Those acquainted with Jesse Trevino's work might find it surprising that this seminal Chicano artist just got his first comprehensive retrospective.