Luis Alfonso Jiménez, Jr

American artist

• Born: July 30, 1940
• Birthplace: El Paso, Texas
• Died: June 13, 2006
• Place of death: Hondo, New Mexico

Jiménez pioneered the use of commercial materials, such as fiberglass, neon, and spray paint, to create striking works of art. He is best known for heroic-scale multicultural outdoor sculptures which explore the political and social life, cultures, and legends of both Mexico and the United States.

Early Life

Luis Alfonso Jiménez, Jr. (lew-EES al-FON-soh hee-MEHN-ehz) was born July 30, 1940, and was raised in the Segundo Barrio neighborhood of El Paso, Texas. During trips to Mexico the family visited museums and public buildings where they saw Mexico’s huge historical murals, and Luis developed an appreciation for the arts of that nation, particularly the works of José Clemente Orozco and the other great muralists. His father, Luis Jiménez, Sr., operated a successful sign shop in El Paso. Although his father once aspired to becoming a professional artist, he poured his creative energies into designing and building the elaborate signs that were known as far away as Las Vegas and New York.

Jiménez began to work in his father’s sign shop by the time he was six years old and continued to do so through his high school years. He grew up learning and understanding the use of such industrial materials as metal and fiberglass and the appropriate paints to use with them. He learned such skills as welding, glassblowing, metalworking, and painting. Although he was awarded prizes for sculpture in high school competitions and was offered several art scholarships, he was determined to study architecture. He attended the University of Texas at El Paso, then called Texas Western, for one year, after which he spent four years in the architecture program at the University of Texas at Austin. He eventually dropped out of the architecture school and switched his focus to art, earning his B.S. degree in art in 1964.

Life’s Work

Jiménez spent two years studying art in Mexico City and another year teaching for the El Paso school district before going to New York City, where he worked at various jobs before becoming an assistant to sculptor Seymour Lipton. In 1969, frustrated with the inability to place his work in galleries, he dragged several sculptures through the front doors of the Leo Castelli Gallery. Director Ivan Karp sent him to the Graham Gallery, which gave him his first solo show. His career accelerated when powerful New York Times critic Hilton Kramer praised the works in Jiménez’s second Graham Gallery exhibit. Jiménez’s goal was to create public artworks, and although his career flourished in New York, he felt disconnected from his roots. He returned temporarily to El Paso.

In 1972, art collector Donald Anderson offered Jiménez a position in his private museum in Roswell, New Mexico. Jiménez remained in New Mexico for the rest of his life. He began to win commissions for large public sculptures in southwestern cities. His first public commission was the sculpture Vaquero for Houston’s Tranquility Park. A cast of Vaquero was later installed at the Smithsonian Institution’s American Art Museum in Washington, D.C.

Jiménez became widely recognized as a significant American sculptor. His works were purchased by the Museum of Modern Art and Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and by the Art Institute of Chicago. “Luis Jiménez: Man on Fire,” a retrospective, opened at the Albuquerque Museum in New Mexico in 1995 and traveled to the Smithsonian American Art Museum. In 1997, another traveling exhibition, “Luis Jiménez: Working Class Heroes: Images from a Popular Culture,” opened at the Dallas Museum of Art, the first venue of a three-year national tour. In 1998 he received a Distinguished Alumni award from the University of Texas in recognition of his artwork.

Jiménez was killed on June 13, 2006, while completing Mustang, a 32-foot steel and fiberglass sculpture of a rearing horse commissioned for the Denver airport. The sculpture swung out of control, pinning Jiménez against a beam and severing a major artery.

Significance

Luis Alfonso Jiménez, Jr., was famous for his large-scale fiberglass and metal sculptures in electric colors that he designed for public spaces where they could be seen and appreciated by a wide variety of people, as well as by sophisticated art collectors. His sculpture reflected his vision of Mexican American culture. His works, such as Man on Fire and Southwest Pieta, displayed a rough realism and a clear social or political agenda. His themes had commonplace sources, such as popular Indian and Mexican dancers, Aztec warriors, cowboys, horses, and “lowrider” truck decorations. They were frequently controversial, sometimes mythical, occasionally violent, intentionally disturbing, but always innovative.

Bibliography

Carlozzi, Annette. Fifty Texas Artists. San Francisco: Chronicle, 1986. Includes a specific selection of painters and sculptors who work or live in Texas, including essays and photo portraits of the artists and their works.

Congdon, Kristin G, and Kara Kelley Hallmark. Artists from Latin American Cultures: A Biographical Dictionary. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2002. Profiles seventy-five twentieth century artists working in a variety of genres in clear, concise essays. Quotations from the artists are included.

Crawford, Bill. “Luis Jiménez’s Outdoor Sculptures Slow Traffic Down.” Smithsonian Magazine, March 1, 1993. A photographic essay with descriptions of Jiménez’s huge outdoor public sculptures and viewers’ reactions to them.

Flores-Turney, Camille. “Howl: The Artwork of Luis Jiménez.” New Mexico Magazine, December 31, 1997. This review describes Jiménez’s portrayals of southwestern life.

Jiménez, Luis, et al. Man on Fire (El hombre en Llamas). Albuquerque: Albuquerque Museum, 1994. A handsomely illustrated catalog published in conjunction with the “Man on Fire” exhibit organized by the Albuquerque Museum in 1994. The text by several different author-contributors offers insight into Jiménez’s life and art.