Mustang, a 32-foot tall cast fiberglass sculpture by New Mexico artist Luis Jiménez, made its long-awaited debut at Denver International Airport. Mustang was one of the original public art commissions for DIA from 1993. The 9,000-pound sculpture was his masterpiece—by far the largest sculpture of the artists’ career. Tragically, Jiménez died while working on the sculpture, having completed the painting of the head of the horse. The final sanding and painting of Mustang was completed posthumously by his studio staff and family, along with professional lowrider/race-car painters Richard LaVato and Camillo Nuñez. Once the work was complete, the sculpture was shipped in three pieces to Kreysler and Associates in California. There, Mustang was finally assembled, reinforced and wrapped for shipment to its final home atop a windswept knoll between the inbound and outbound lanes of Peña Boulevard at DIA. The bright blue rearing mustang with gleaming red eyes was installed permanently on a windy morning, February 11, 2008.

 

 

Born in in 1940, Luis Alfonso Jiménez Jr. was the son of Mexican immigrants. Luis’ father owned a neon sign shop in El Paso, where he worked as a youth.  His experiences at the sign shop and his fascination with car culture in the border areas greatly influenced his art career.  Jiménez studied architecture at the , , where he also took art classes and began to experiment with creating sculptures in wood, steel, and fiberglass.  He began working in fiberglass almost exclusively for his larger public sculptures because of its association with popular culture. In doing so, Jiménez became one of the artists who made fiberglass an acceptable medium in the 1960s. In 1966 he moved to and began to exhibit his art and then in 1972 moved to to focus on his public sculpture commissions, while continuing to create drawings, prints, and lithographs.

It was with his large-scale, public sculptures that Jiménez found acclaim — and also heated controversy — as an artist. Colorful neon paint and low-brow fiberglass material were used to depict popular images of the “Chicano” culture and “el Norte”: the pietá, el mesteño, a border crossing, fiesta dancers, el vaquero. His sculptures of animals often included lit eyes—a nod to his father’s neon sign work in El Paso. Jiménez’ combination of color, materials and scale was uncommon in the realm of fine art. Rudolfo Anaya, professor at the University of New Mexico, said of Jiménez: "The kind of medium he used shocked the art world at first. It was first called outlandish and garish, but it spoke not only to Hispanics but to the world. In the coming years there will be a school of Luis Jiménez art."

 

 Mustang  facts:

Luis Jimenez Sculpture Installed at DIA