Downtown LA’s brilliant, Anthony Quinn mural gets a makeover
LOS ANGELES — He was a good-natured Greek, an angry Bedouin and numerous other unforgettable characters in a legendary film career, and now Anthony Quinn is once again the splendorous “Pope of Broadway, his colorful image welcoming visitors to downtown Los Angeles.
Eloy Torrez’s brilliant, 70-foot-tall acrylic mural, showing the actor sharply dressed and with arms outstretched in a welcoming gesture, was rededicated Tuesday, after the artist spent much of last fall restoring it to its former glory.
“It was a fun adventure to relive it, it was kind of like time-travelling,” he said of spending countless hours perched on a window-washing platform high above a downtown parking lot as he repaired the work he’d created in 1985 when he was just 30.
“I’m not quite 30 anymore,” the modest, soft-spoken Torrez said with a smile as he stood under the huge mural Tuesday. “But it did take me back to specific moments when I first did it.”