by Mike Smith
Daily Lobo
Hundreds of artists, friends, acquaintances and art connoisseurs gathered at the National Hispanic Cultural Center on Saturday to celebrate the life of artist Luis JimÇnez, who died after a portion of a 32-foot-tall sculpture fell and crushed him in his studio on June 13.
The celebration included reminiscences from scholars and friends, a condolence from Gov. Bill Richardson, flamenco music and slide shows of JimÇnez's art.
Eduardo D°az, executive director of the National Hispanic Cultural Center, said JimÇnez represents Chicano art and is one of the greatest artists the Chicano movement has produced.
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"If you're from the Southwest and you care anything about the experience of living here - the culture and the history of the Southwest - you really can't help but be impacted by the life of Luis JimÇnez, because he reflected it all in such an impassioned, courageous, sensitive way," D°az said. "If you care, then I think Luis JimÇnez stands as a giant."
His death at the age of 65 put an end to a lengthy and acclaimed career of painting, drawing and sculpting. As a youth in the 1940s and 1950s, JimÇnez lived and worked in El Paso, Texas, for his father's neon sign company, where he learned the welding skills he would use in many of his sculptures.
Suzanne Ivener-Pettersson was an acquaintance of JimÇnez and attended the event. Ivener-Pettersson said when JimÇnez visited his grandparents in Mexico City, he was introduced to large-scale public murals, and it inspired him to create art for public places. His time away from the Southwest - while he was living in New York City in the 1960s - made him determined to incorporate his own culture and heritage into his art, she said.
Eric Castillo, a UNM graduate student working on a dissertation about JimÇnez, said JimÇnez's work helped bring Hispanic art out of its localized niche and into mainstream American culture - out of small galleries and into permanent exhibits at the Smithsonian Museum and elsewhere.
"He brought Chicano art into the mainstream," Castillo said. "He is the pathway that we can go through now. He gave a voice to us, to the Chicano people."
UNM art professor Holly Barnet-Sanchez said JimÇnez's paintings are full of the beauty, delicacy and compressed energy of wild animals. His sculptures, she said, are usually larger than life, brightly-colored, generally made of fiberglass and most often made to be installed in public areas.
"His works bring so many things together," Barnet-Sanchez said. "He has tremendous talent and skill and vision. He monumentalizes the ordinary. He has a very expansive vision of what 'American' is."
Barnet-Sanchez said the couple depicted in "Fiesta Jarabe" - the wildly colorful fiberglass statue of an aging pair of Hispanic dancers in front of UNM's Center for the Arts building - is a perfect example of this.
"They're not young and beautiful and lithe," Barnet-Sanchez said. "They're older. The man has a bit of a paunch, and the woman looks as if she's been around the block - yet they still exhibit sensuality, a love for life, a love of the dance and a passion for each other. They are monumental, garish, glossy and elegant in their joy."
Many of those who shared their thoughts at Saturday's celebration addressed the value, impact and meaning of JimÇnez's art - yet all of them emphasized that to JimÇnez, his art was second to the people in his life, especially his children.
"He was a man with such a heart," said artist Ed Samuels, a friend of JimÇnez. "He will be very missed."
