Compton artist Anthony Pittman paints Black angels in murals

Anthony Lee Pittman spent five days on scaffolding outside Patria Coffee Roasters in Compton, painting Black and brown angels onto a wall facing Wilson Park. The mural is the first completed piece of “Los Angelitos,” an ongoing public art project that inserts Afro-Latino spiritual imagery into Southern California streets historically defined by hip-hop and gang narratives rather than fine art.

Each figure in the Patria Coffee Roasters mural holds a ribbon inscribed with the name of a neighborhood — Compton, Watts, Southeast Los Angeles, Inglewood and South Central — mapping the specific geography that shaped the artist’s dual identity as a Black and Mexican American man. Pittman spent two weeks rendering the angels in his studio before executing the exterior installation, blending traditional acrylic techniques with wheat-pasting methods rooted in street art culture.

The project extends beyond religious iconography into historical reclamation. Pittman incorporated snowy mountain landscapes adapted from Ferdinand Deppe’s 1832 painting “The Mission of San Gabriel, Alta California in May 1832,” widely recognized as one of the oldest depictions of a California mission. By extracting the natural landscape while deliberately omitting the colonial mission structure itself, the mural visually separates Indigenous and pre-colonial California history from the Spanish institutions that displaced native populations. This approach mirrors broader decolonial art practices gaining traction across the American West, where artists are increasingly using public walls to challenge foundational state mythologies.

“Los Angelitos” draws its name from a bilingual double meaning: a nod to Los Angeles and a direct reference to “Angelitos Negros,” the 1940s poem by Venezuelan writer Andrés Eloy Blanco. The poem, which questions why churches never paint Black angels, was later popularized globally through recordings by Eartha Kitt, Roberta Flack and Celia Cruz. For Pittman, who grew up attending Catholic Mass in Compton surrounded exclusively by European depictions of saints, the poem articulated an absence he had noticed since childhood.

Pittman’s work arrives during a concentrated period of arts infrastructure development in Compton. The city is currently undergoing a major rebuild at Centennial High School, while Compton High School recently opened a new performing arts center. Local artist Mr. Wash is also advancing plans for a $15 million dedicated arts center. Unlike gallery-focused initiatives, these projects prioritize neighborhood accessibility, operating on the premise that residents should not need to travel to gentrified downtown Los Angeles districts to experience large-scale contemporary art. Pittman’s existing footprint includes murals at Gonzales Park, A New Beginning Resource Center and Compton High School, alongside hand-drawn illustrations covering utility boxes along Compton Boulevard and Douglas Dollarhide Drive.

His entry into professional art began locally. As a middle school student learning fundamentals from teacher Mr. Aguilera, Pittman later sold his first commission — a color portrait of actress Dorothy Dandridge — directly to Aguilera on the sidewalk after a class at Compton High School. Over the past decade, his focus shifted toward navigating the complexities of Afro-Latino identity, a demographic frequently marginalized within both mainstream Latino cultural spaces and broader Black American artistic movements. Connecting with other Afro-Latino creatives in Compton, and finding early representation in figures like Celia Cruz, solidified his decision to center mixed-heritage subjects in his portfolio.

Public reaction to the Wilson Park mural challenged the artist’s own expectations of resistance. Older community members immediately recognized the racial identity of the painted angels. Rather than dismissing the spiritual subject matter as incongruent with local masculinity, residents engaged directly with the work during its installation, treating the site as a communal space rather than an intrusion.

Pittman places his practice within a lineage of Black artists who have worked in and around Compton, including Elliott Pinkney, John Outterbridge, Charles White and Richard Wyatt Jr. Outterbridge, who died in 2020, was instrumental in establishing the Watts Towers Arts Center and championing assemblage art in South Los Angeles, laying groundwork for subsequent generations of community-based creators in the region.

Pittman is currently planning research trips to churches, museums and cultural sites across the United States and Europe with significant Black populations to inform the next phase of the “Los Angelitos” series.