Luis Jimenez - El Paso, Texas

Mr. Jimenez was born in El Paso in 1940. His father owned an electric sign shop, which exposed Luis to spray painting and welding. He moved to New York in 1966, returned to New Mexico in the early 1970's and found success — and controversy — as a sculptor of outdoor objects, which are featured prominently around Albuquerque, including at the University of New Mexico, in the neighborhood Martineztown and in the National Hispanic Cultural Center.The Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., honored Mr. Jimenez's sculpture "Man on Fire" in 1979, when it became part of the Smithsonian's National Museum of American Art. The work, perhaps his best known, depicts a man in flames, and is based on the Aztec emperor Cuauhtémoc, who was burned alive by Spanish conquistadores. A casting of another of his sculptures, "Vaquero," which shows a bronco rider atop a shimmering, metallic-blue horse, sits outside the museum.His work has been featured at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/15/arts/design/15jimenez.html?_r=0

Area: Central / Downtown