VENCEREMOS

1991
JANET BRAUN-REINITZ, ANNA HAMMOND, LISA JACOBSON, NOAH JEMISIN, CAMILLE PERROTTET, ROCHELLE SHICOFF, JANE WEISSMAN

98-100 Featherbed Lane, South Bronx, NY
10’ x 87’, acrylic on concrete
with Highbridge Community Housing Development, West Bronx Youth Center

Photos © Janet Braun-Reinitz

A chance encounter at a community function introduced Artmakers to Peg Seip, a community planner based in the Bronx, in a neighborhood disastrously split in two by Robert Moses’ Cross Bronx Expressway. She had already secured a site for a mural – the West Bronx Youth Center run by the nearby St. Francis of Assisi Church – and was searching for muralists. 

Donating its services, Janet and Rochelle met with local residents at two community meetings to develop themes for the wall’s seven sections, each to be designed by an individual artist in their own styles. Coordinated by Camille, the mural was painted over a four-day period by the artists along with fifty volunteer adults and children. Venceremos – “we will win! – honors the residents who worked together to prevent the razing of several neighborhood buildings, empty since the 1980s. Their efforts led to the rehabilitation of 23 buildings and the renovation of 722 apartments.

Church sponsorship and the architecture of the wall inspired the muralists to create a design that emulated predella panels found in Italian Renaissance altarpieces – those small scenes below, yet relating to, the subject of the main panel. Anchoring each end of the wall is an angel; one repels the bulldozers (Noah Jemisin), the other flies over the rehabilitated buildings (Lisa Jacobson).

The sacred and the profane are wittily juxtaposed throughout the mural. Children’s hands applaud a tree topped by a dove of peace (Camille Perrottet). A modern-day St. George (Janet Braun-Reinitz) slays the dragon of ignorance, drugs, and AIDS. A traditional St. Francis (Rochelle Shicoff) presides over a beneficial and bountiful natural world. Its brilliantly colored tropical fish were painted by Oswaldo who, passing by, stopped and offered to help. An artist in his native Cuba, he had traveled the 90 miles to Florida in a rubber tube only six months earlier.