Coscolina Con Muerto (Flirt With Death) 1986
Stone Lithograph Edition 35/50
Size: 26.75 x 21 inches
Frame size: 44.75 x 39
Luis Alfonso Jimenez
Born, 1940, El Paso, Texas, died 2006, Hondo, New Mexico.
Statement: Luis Jimenez, in his work, celebrates the vitality of life. . . . Jimenez es un hijo de la frontera; he knows its people and the landscape. It is the transformation of these people into art that is his most important contribution to the art of this vast region which stretches between Mexico and the United States.
His subject matter utilizes the popular images of the cultura del norte, and a large part of it is depicted and transformed in the rough and tumble world of la frontera. He is also a son of el norte, and so he uses its materials and explores its emerging, popular myths. The tension and attraction of Jimnez’s work is that he always creates within the space of his two worlds, the Mexicano and the Americano. He constantly shows us the irony of the two forces which repel, while showing us glimpses of the synthesis he seeks. What a gift it has been to us for this talented artist to reflect on the soul of our region. He gives meaning to our existence and history.
Rudolfo Anaya (passage chosen by the artist), A View from La Frontera, Man on Fire: Luis Jimnez, pp. 1, 3, 6Biography: Luis Jimnez was born in Texas to parents who had emigrated from Mexico to the United States; he would later dedicate his 1989 sculpture Border Crossing to his father, who had entered the country illegally. The elder Jimnez was a neon sign designer in El Paso, and Luis worked with him as a youth. His experience working in the neon shop and his fascination with U.S. car culture would both become major influences on his art career.
Jimenez studied architecture at the University of Texas, Austin (UTA), and also took art courses in which he first created sculptures with wood, steel, and fiberglass, choosing the latter because of its association with U.S. popular culture. He subsequently became one of the artists who made fiberglass an acceptable medium in the 1960s. In 1964 Jimenez received his B.S. in art from UTA, and he continued his studies at the Universidad Nacional Autnoma de Mexico in Mexico City.
In 1966 he moved to New York City and worked as an assistant to sculptor Seymour Lipton. Jimnez began to exhibit his art while in New York and in 1972 moved to New Mexico to focus on creating public sculptures, even as he maintained his diverse output of drawings, prints, and lithographs.
Drawing on his early experiences, Jimnez creates works that come from a border perspective, one that draws upon the hybridity bred by culture clashes. Often socially and politically informed, his works speak not only in regional terms, those germane to the southwestern...
Category
1980s Contemporary Phoenix