Reflejo del Chuco (Reflection of El Paso), Luis Alfonso Jimenez

Exhibition Label: “Conversation I: Place,” Oct-2007, Emily Stamey
“You have to remember that I grew up as a Mexican in Texas….Growing up on the border in El Paso, which some people have said is not really quite in the United States, the Mexican, or the Spanish thing was important, and so going to Mexico was an important kind of pilgrimage for me.

“In fact, I thought I was going to stay there and live. When I got down to Mexico, I realized that I was an American. My whole way of thinking, my framework, etc., is American. I am an American of Mexican descent….It’s an important thing to realize….”
- Luis Jimenez

Luis Jimenez, interviewed by Peter Bermingham in Tucson, Arizona, December 15 and 17, 1985. Smithsonian Archives of American Art.

Luis Jimenez applied the vivid symbolism and color imagery of pre- and post-Contact Mexico to an array of artistic media, most notably his lithographs and sculptures. His works evoke the essence of the historic and contemporary collision of cultures in the U.S.-Mexico border region and the tension between the humanized landscape and the wild. The sensuality of his characters, both human and animal, is almost overwhelming; they writhe with passion, you can smell and hear them, feel their strength, sense their weakness. One has the feeling that here was a man you would like to have walked or rode with for some distance to no place in particular; talking, but mainly listening, about his impressions of and concern for the passing scenes.
- Bill Woods, Professor of Geography