Anthony “Tony” Machado (1954–2018) was born in Oakland, California, and passed away in Atlanta, Georgia. Machado was a visual artist, painter, muralist, and sculptor. While still in high school, Machado would ask his mom, a librarian, to check out books on Mexican art. Around the same time Machado met artist Michael Ríos, who would become one of his long-standing collaborators, friends, and mentors, and both of them would spend hours looking at the books. He attended the Academy of Art College in San Francisco in 1973. Machado, with artists Ríos and Richard Montez, would end up creating the BART mural in the San Francisco Mission District, as well as Quetzalcoatl in Mini Park and the Homage to Siqueiros mural inside of the Bank of America building. Most of these works featured cultural landmarks and imagery, conveyed anticapitalist messages that undermined their corporate sponsor, and reflected the efforts of the people that would build BART. Ríos and Machado also collaborated on the antiwar mural ¡Esta gran humanidad ha dicho basta! / This Great People Has Said Enough! in the Mission Cultural Center, as well as a series of posters for the Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco for different concerts and performances. With Ríos, at a studio they called Heaven Smiles, he designed album covers and other artwork for Carlos Santana. From 1984 on, Machado worked creating signs, producing statues for the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, and creating portraits, as well as creating a few murals in the mid 1990s.
Camilo Garzón
