Luis Jiménez (sculptor)

Born in El Paso, Texas, Jiménez worked at his father's neon sign studio as a child, which introduced him to art.^[2]

He studied art and architecture at the University of Texas in Austin and El Paso, earning a bachelor's degree in 1964. He moved to New York City in 1966 after completing his post-graduate work at Ciudad Universitaria, Mexico City, D.F.

From his shop in El Paso, Jimenez's sculptures spread across the United States, many as outdoor sculptures because of their size.^[3] He became an accomplished artist and taught art at the University of Arizona and later the University of Houston.

As a sculptor, Jiménez was known for his large polychromed fiberglass sculptures, often of Southwestern and Hispanic themes. His works were often controversial, and are recognizable due to their themes and the colorful, undulating surfaces the artist employed. The finish of his sculptures had more in common with commercial products than with conventional fine art sculptures.

Jiménez was influenced by the murals of José Clemente Orozco and Diego Rivera. He was a contemporary artist whose roots were in pop art, the modernism of the Mexican muralists, and the regionalism of Thomas Hart Benton and Grant Wood.^[4] Heroic sculptures were Jiménez's forte, championing the common man in his work.^[5] By working in his father's shop on neon signs and sculptures, he was brought in to contact with popular culture at the time, which also included lowrider car culture. The prints he published at Landfall Press in Chicago and at regional, artistic presses around America spread his art around the area.^[6] Brightly painted fiberglass bodywork, often accented with glitter, served as a particularly relevant artistic influence.^[7]

While he is best known as a sculptor, Jiménez also created color lithographs and color drawings in pencil, pastel, and oil stick. He made preparatory drawings for his sculptures, some of which were very large. Most of his sculptures were made of fiberglass, which were cast in a mold, after which they were painted with multiple layers of paint and coated with epoxy.^[8] One art expert has noted, "There was no surface on any Luis Jiménez sculpture that was ever any less than six different colors, each airbrushed separately adding a slightly different tone." Jiménez would also often use flake to introduce a glittery quality often seen on lowrider cars in his paint.^[9]

In 1993, Jiménez was a recipient of the New Mexico Governor's Awards for Excellence in the Arts.^[10] In 1998 he received a Distinguished Alumni award from the University of Texas in recognition of his artwork.

As a child, Jiménez's left eye was shot by a BB gun. Surgeries corrected his vision, but he developed persistent migraines and got a glass eye later in life.^[11]

When he was a young adult teaching art at a junior high school, he was temporarily paralyzed from the chest down in a car accident.^[8]

In his later years, he had a heart attack and required hand surgery.^[11]

On June 13, 2006, Jiménez died in an accident at age 65 in his studio in Hondo, New Mexico, when a large section of his 32-foot-high work Blue Mustang, intended for Denver International Airport, came loose from a hoist and severed an artery in his leg.^[12][11]

Governor Bill Richardson ordered flags in New Mexico flown at half-staff June 15–16, 2006, in Jiménez's honor.^[12]

Jiménez's daughter Elisa is a multimedia artist and fashion designer and was a contestant on season four of Bravo's reality television series Project Runway.^[13][14]

• Man on Fire, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC, 1969^[2]
• Progress I, Albuquerque Museum, New Mexico, 1974^[15]
• Progress II, Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, Texas, 1976^[16]
• Vaquero, Moody Park, Houston, Texas, 1980
• Sodbuster, Wichita State university as part of the Ulrich Museum of art outdoor sculpture collection, 1980–81
• Honky Tonk, Wichita State University as part of the Ulrich Museum, 1981
• Southwest Pieta, Longfellow Park, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 1983 (declared a national treasure by President Bill Clinton in 1999)
• Howl, Albuquerque Museum, New Mexico and Ulrich Museum of Art, Wichita State University, 1986^[15]
• Border Crossing/Cruzando el Rio Bravo, Santa Fe, New Mexico,^[17] Los Angeles, California, and Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, Texas,^[18] 1989
• Steelworker, Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, Alabama, 1990
• Los Lagartos, Downtown, El Paso, Texas, 1993
• Fiesta Jarabe, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 1996
• Assyrian Lion, Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, Kalamazoo, Michigan 2004
• Cleveland Fallen Firefighters Memorial, Cleveland, OH, 2006
• Blue Mustang, Denver International Airport, Denver, Colorado, 2008

• History of the Mexican-Americans in Texas