Luis Jimenez, who attained international fame as a sculptor and painter early in his lifetime, was born in El Paso in 1940. While highly recognized for his fiberglass sculptures, he was also a contributor to the pop art movement of the late 1960s and a major influence in the evolution of Latino art.
As a teen, Jimenez learned to draw and paint while working in his father’s electric sign company. His father, Luis Jimenez, Sr., also taught his son to weld and design the many neon signs that they installed in El Paso, southern New Mexico, and northern Mexico. Their shop in El Paso’s Segundo Barrio was a few blocks from the Rio Grande, and was part of one of the oldest residential communities in America. The border, where bilingualism and biculturalism prevailed, shaped Jimenez’s approach to artistic imagery.
Luis Jimenez, “Alligator” Lithograph. Donated to the McNay Art Museum by Harriett and Ricardo Romo.
In 1959, Jimenez left his border setting to study art and architecture at the University of Texas at Austin. After graduating in 1964, he attended the Cuidad Universitaria in Mexico City. While studying art in Mexico City, he was inspired by the murals and paintings of Diego Rivera and Jose Clemente Orozco. Jimenez’s brush strokes, line drawing, and preference for larger than life figures reveal a debt to the Mexican masters.
Jimenez’s “Man On Fire,” a fiberglass sculpture, which was initially exhibited at the Smithsonian in 1979, was influenced by Orozco’s famous painting of the Aztec prince Cuauhtémoc, whom the Spaniard tortured with fire in the aftermath of the conquest of the Aztec empire. One of several renderings of Jimenez’s sculpture is featured near the entrance of the McNay Museum.
Luis Jimenez “Man on Fire” Patio, the McNay Art Museum. Photo: Ricardo Romo.
Jimenez’s lithograph of Cesar Chavez, which can be viewed at the lobby level of the McNay Museum, was his last drawing before an accident in his studio took his life in 2006. The drawing utilizes soft brown earth colors and strong facial line features to convey the career of a man who devoted his life to improving the lives of field workers in California.
I first met and interviewed Jimenez in 1985 for a story I published about him and Amado Peňa. Jimenez had a solo exhibition at the Lagoon Gloria Museum in Austin and I was asked by Humanities Texas to write about border artists. I also helped to arrange Jimenez’s visit to San Antonio where he completed his Chavez print at UTSA. For years, Jimenez was a friend and one of my favorite artists.
Luis Jimenez, “Cesar Chavez” lithograph. Donated to the McNay Art Museum by Harriett and Ricardo Romo.
A new exhibition at the McNay Art Museum, “Lions, and Tigers, and Bears, Oh My!” features Jimenez’s “Alligator.” The Alligator print is a powerful rendering of a menacing reptile, an image that Jimenez masterfully completed by combining his drawings on two Bavarian stones side by side. Since the 1700s, Bavarian stones have been a favorite among artists working with lithographs.
In the same McNay exhibit, we can view a powerful rendering of a bison by Richard Armendariz. Armendariz, a vastly talented Latino artist also from El Paso, now lives and teaches in San Antonio, Texas. He grew up admiring Jimenez and spent time as an apprentice with him in Hondo, New Mexico, Jimenez’s home from 1970 to 2006.
Richard Armendariz, “Red Saturn and his Children” woodcut 2016. Donated to the McNay Art Museum by Harriett and Ricardo Romo.
The “Red Saturn'' bison print is one of many animals that have captured Armendariz’s attention and his imagination over the past decade. These are images, he tells us in his artist statement, “that have cultural, biographical and historical lineage, are carved with power tools and burned into the surface of the painting, drawing, or the wood blocks that later become prints.”
Many of Armendariz’s works feature animals of the borderlands which include a desolate Chihuahua desert, the Sierra Madre, and Rio Grande watershed. His prints of owls, snakes, coyotes, rabbits, and bison are some of his most recent images. His love for his surroundings influence his art. “Growing up in El Paso, Texas with Juarez, Mexico in my backyard,” Armendariz told me in 2017, “I was saturated with a mix of romanticism for the New and Old West, American culture, and the iconography of my ancestral past.”
There is nothing predictable about Armendariz’s artistic statements or his subject choice. He sometimes adds texts to his art and his phrases are often surprising. Like Jimenez, Armendariz likes cars, notably lowriders such as those found in his hometown of “El Chuco,” as El Paso is referred to by local Chicanos. An Armendariz sunset incorporates the lyrics of Bob Dylan; other images employ the phrases of his favorite country western songs.
Richard Armendariz, Roadman 3. Oil on carved birch plywood, 48x48, 2010. Collection of Harriett and Ricardo Romo.
In one print, the words “Ya Me Voy a Therapy” are written on the back window of an automobile much like a bumper sticker, but significantly larger. For a deeper understanding of Armendariz’s artistic approach, I recommend the exhibition catalogue “The Dream Keeper'' prepared for San Antonio’s children museum, the DoSeum in 2017. Armendariz was the museum’s first Artist in Residence and worked with the curators to create social awareness and artistic interest among children.
With regards to the social value of art, the DoSeum turned to Nato Thompson’s book Living as Form. Thompson argues that “social practice artists create forms of living that activate communities and advance public awareness of pressing social issues.” The social issues of humans protecting the environment serve as Armendariz’s driving purpose. While he paints as a Latino, his message is universal.
Is it Laguna Gloria?