Gilbert “Magu” Luján created a menagerie of animated anthropomorphic creatures that populated a world he called, Magulandia. These figures would even morph within the same drawing from a crouching man into a dog, then into a Pre-Columbian pyramid. Luján’s puckish rabbits drove low-rider cars painted with brilliant flames and flowers, as they cruised their way to car rallies. His contemporary Chicano portraits featured people with hats in the shape of pyramids or empanadas, Western boots with faces, and women speaking in pictographic symbols like the glyphs of their Aztec ancestors. In the early 1970s, Luján founded the Chicano Arts collective, Los Four, along with Carlos Almaraz, Beto De La Rocha, Frank Romero, and later, Judithe Hernandez. The group created politically charged murals, brought Chicano art into mainstream recognition, and had a groundbreaking exhibition at UCI and LACMA in 1973-74. Hal Glicksman, who organized that original UCI exhibition, went on to curate, along with Rhea Anastas, Luján’s major retrospective at UCI in 2017. The exhibition at Craig Krull Gallery includes drawings from the artist’s estate, as well as one of his brilliantly painted cardboard and wood stick sculptures of two dogs driving a big red convertible through a desert of giant cacti.