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Mexican Wrestling as Art

By Noah Adams
Published November 7, 2005 at 12:00 AM EST
A wall of oversized photos of Mexican wrestlers dominate the gallery space at Equator Books in Venice, Calif.
Noah Adams, NPR
A wall of oversized photos of Mexican wrestlers dominate the gallery space at Equator Books in Venice, Calif.

In a bookstore in the funky California beach town of Venice, larger-than-life-sized color photographs of masked Mexican wrestlers are the focal point of a very different art exhibit.

Malcolm Venville photographed about 150 "Lucha Libre" wrestlers for an upcoming book. Translated literally, "lucha libre" means "free fighting." To many Latinos, it's professional wrestling, vaudeville, a venerable cinema genre and the Bushido code of the Japanese Samurai all wrapped up in one campy and crowd-pleasing spectacle.

Venville has made those campy characters into art objects. Equator Books has 13 of his highly detailed wrestler photos on display -- including Astro Boy, Super Pinocho 3000, Raziel, Super Porky and Coco Verde, the green clown.

Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

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Noah Adams
Noah Adams, long-time co-host of NPR's All Things Considered, brings more than three decades of radio experience to his current job as a contributing correspondent for NPR's National Desk., focusing on the low-wage workforce, farm issues, and the Katrina aftermath. Now based in Ohio, he travels extensively for his reporting assignments, a position he's held since 2003.
See stories by Noah Adams