Inocencio Jiménez Chino

Inocencio Jiménez Chino is a corn farmer and self-trained artist from the Nahuatl (Aztec)-speaking village of San Agustín Oapan. This community is at the center of a genre of “tourist art” iconic in Mexico and known throughout the world as amate paintings. Inocencio was twelve years old when this form of painting first emerged and soon took over village life, with virtually every family learning the skills necessary to produce dozens of homogenized and stylized works. He was eighteen when the 1968 Olympics were held in Mexico City and the government ordered hundreds of thousands of drawings, to meet the demand of the influx of visitors to Mexico.

Over the following decades Inocencio continued to paint for the mass market. But at the same time, he strove to innovate and excel, painting works that had no immediate market but rather started to adorn his house, a small private collection tacked to the brick walls of his modest home. Unfamiliar with the possibilities of high quality brushes, he made his own out of the hairs of donkeys tied to small hollow reeds. Despite these rudimentary tools, he developed a skill with detail that rivals that of any academy trained artist.

Submitted by Catalyst Contemporary