Artwork Description
Luis Jimenez – Lagartos [Alligators]
Dimensions: 39 x 55″ paper
Medium: watercolor on paper
Year: 1995
Luis Jimenez (1940-2006) was born in El Paso, Texas and died in Hondo, New Mexico where, in 2006, he was tragically killed in an accident in his studio while working on the 32-foot sculpture Blue Mustang, a commission for the Denver Airport.
He received a Bachelor of Science, Art, and Architecture from the University of Texas at Austin in 1964. Following a brief stay in Mexico and six years in New York, he returned to the Southwest in the early 1970s. Although Jiménez was primarily known as a sculptor, whose large fiberglass figures captured the color and vigor of Hispanic-American women and men. He was also accomplished at color lithographs and colored-pencil drawings. His drawings helped work out the conceptual and formal configurations of his sculptures, which are made of fiberglass cast in a mold, then painted and coated with epoxy. His New York sculptures, such as Man on Fire, involved 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.