A panoramic survey of Latino culture

Halfway through “Visiones: Latino Art and Culture,” the sweeping, six-part PBS series, we meet Chicago’s aging “soapbox artist” Carlos Cortez, a conscientious objector during World War II and a lifelong member of the International Workers of the World. The gray-haired activist and poet likes to sell his politically charged work as cheaply as possible, so he saves on materials by using discarded ink.

Cut to an interview with a museum official who explains that Cortez has even tried to guarantee low prices in the afterlife. In the event any of his woodcut prints were to become valuable after his death, the artist’s will orders that extra copies be printed to keep the cost down.

“Art is supposed to serve everybody and not just the idle rich,” Cortez says.

The eccentric anti-materialist is only one of the intriguing characters who populate this important documentary. Produced and directed by veteran Texas filmmaker Hector Galan, the series gives a panoramic overview of Latino art, music, theater and film in the United States in six half-hour episodes.

The series -- which debuted last weekend in Los Angeles on KCET-TV and continues at 10:30 p.m. Sundays through Oct. 10 -- contains obligatory segments on L.A. murals, East Coast salsa music and the mystical New Mexico artisans known as Santeros.

But even the familiar can be revealing in these compact vignettes. Discussing the use of masks in Mexican theater, playwright Luis Valdez of the fabled Teatro Campesino tells us that the Spanish word for mask, mascara, literally means “more face.”

“Mexican culture, believe it or not, is basically modest, and in order for people to cut loose it helps to put on a mask,” explains Valdez, whose grown children are shown helping run the San Juan Bautista-based company.

With such a broad topic undertaken, the series sometimes seems unfocused and suffers from occasionally jarring transitions. (Each half-hour program contains three segments by different producers.) Yet the global perspective allows viewers to see the similarities among the country’s disparate and disconnected Latino communities in L.A., New York and Miami. It’s striking to discover, for instance, the common motivations driving Valdez in California and pioneering film actress Miriam Colon with her Puerto Rican Traveling Theater Company of New York.

The most engrossing segments introduce little-known artists: a quirky experimental filmmaker from El Paso, an intense Nuyorican poet known as El Reverendo and the soft-spoken mother who takes her charismatic young son to a salsa performance school in Philadelphia.

Capturing the spirit of the series, the school’s director observes, “The barrio is a very rich place to be in and to live.”

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‘Visiones: Latino Art and Culture’

Where: KCET-TV

When: 10:30 p.m. Sundays