Luis Jiménez

American, (1940–2006)
As a child, Luis Jiménez apprenticed at his father’s neon-sign studio. He studied art and architecture at the University of Texas, receiving his B.F.A. degree in 1964. Jiménez taught art at an El Paso junior high school until he was temporarily paralyzed from the chest down in a car accident. He traveled to Mexico City, where he studied the famous Mexican muralists. In 1966 the artist moved to New York, where he began making painted fiberglass figurative works inspired by the everyday lives of Latin Americans living in the Southwest. He returned to the Southwest in the early 1970s and divided his time between El Paso, Texas, and Hondo, New Mexico. Although Jiménez was primarily a sculptor, he was also accomplished at color lithographs and colored-pencil drawings. He executed preparatory drawings to work out the conceptual and and formal configurations of his sculptures, which are made of fiberglass cast in a mold, then painted and coated with epoxy. His New York sulptures involve themes of political and social satire, while those made after his return to the Southwest focus on that region’s Mexican and Anglo-American communities. Jiménez combines size, color, and pose to create a dramatic and heroic effect in his impressive works. His large fiberglass figures capture the color and vigor of Hispanic-American women and men and his work shows his concern for working-class people and those who have suffered from discrimination.

Source: Smithsonian American Art Museum