En El Barrio: Francisco Moreno

Francisco Moreno: Historia Sintética at Dallas Contemporary — History, Myth, and Painted Storytelling

Francisco Moreno: Historia Sintética is the first solo museum survey of the Dallas-based, Mexican-American painter, on view at Dallas Contemporary through August 30, 2026. The exhibition brings together major installations and large-scale canvases that reframe history painting for the 21st century, blending Old Master traditions with Mexican symbolism, religious iconography, science fiction, and personal narrative.

Artist background and approach

Born in Mexico City in 1986 and raised between Mexico and the United States, Moreno earned a BFA from the University of Texas at Arlington and an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. His practice interrogates how stories—both grand historical narratives and intimate personal myths—are constructed, questioned, and retold through paint.dallascontemporary+1

What “Historia Sintética” means

The title works on multiple levels: “historia” can mean both “history” and “story,” while “sintética” suggests something synthetic or constructed, yet also points to the Greek synthetikos—“skilled in putting together.” In Moreno’s hands, painting becomes an act of assembly: genres, geographies, time periods, allegory, and humor are woven into dense visual universes that invite viewers to read, re-read, and re-imagine the past and future.

Key works and installations

Historia Sintética centers on three major projects developed over the last decade, accompanied by numerous large canvases from the same period. Highlights include:
Chapel: an immersive painted environment inspired by a Spanish Romanesque chapel in the Dallas Museum of Art’s collection, transforming the gallery into a total pictorial space.
Mural Cycle: a recent installation of five large-scale paintings shown together for the first time, extending Moreno’s narrative ambition across a monumental sequence.
WCD Project (2015): a multi-part response to Emanuel Leutze’s Washington Crossing the Delaware (1851), reframing a canonical American history painting through Moreno’s hybrid visual language.

Works like The Allegory of Weed Gummy and Alcohol Induced Anxiety (2021) exemplify how he mixes contemporary life, humor, and allegory within a history-painting framework

Themes: history, identity, and the labor of painting

Moreno’s work addresses cultural hybridity and belonging, drawing on art-historical research, religious imagery, and Mexican symbolism while colliding them with surreal and speculative elements. Alongside narrative content, he investigates the history of painting itself—its labor, process, and materiality—making the act of making part of the story. The result is a body of work that questions power, heritage, and the ways in which stories are told and believed

Exhibition details for visitors

• Venue: Dallas Contemporary, 161 Glass St., Dallas, TX 75207
• Dates: April 17 – August 30, 2026 (on view through Aug. 30)dallasnews+1
• Hours: Thursday–Sunday, 11:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m.dallasnews+1
• Admission: Free (supported through 2026 by the Eugene McDermott Foundation)dallascontemporary+1
• Curator: Guest curator Thomas Feulmerdallascontemporary+1
• More info: dallascontemporary.org and press inquiries at press@dallascontemporary.org

Francisco Moreno: Historia Sintética offers a rare, museum-level look at one of Dallas’s most ambitious painters, positioning history painting as a living, critical practice rather than a relic. By assembling disparate visual threads into synthetic yet deeply human narratives, Moreno invites Dallas audiences to reconsider how stories—personal, cultural, and historical—are built, believed, and transformed.