Damian, Carol

Dr. Carol Damian is Professor of Art History and Chairperson of the Department of Art and Art History at Florida International University. Dr. Damian received her B.A. in Art History from Wheaton College in Norton, Mass., and her M.A. in Pre-Columbian Art and Ph.D. in Latin American History from the University of Miami. She is the author of The Virgin of the Andes: Art and Ritual in Colonial Cuzco (Grassfield Press, 1995) and is the Miami correspondent for Art Nexus and Arte al Dia.

2005 0-7734-6217-1
This volume traces in text and photographs the life and work of Peruvian folk artist Nicario Jiménez Quispe. One of Latin America's most renowned and original practitioners of this art form, Jiménez combines peasant traditions of his birthplace high in Peru's Central Andes with a keen eye and searching mind to create unique works of social and political as well as aesthetic impact. Jiménez expresses himself artistically through the creation of retablos, wooden boxes with colorful, complex and moving three-dimensional scenes portraying a variety of subjects that range from the daily lives and rituals of the Andean peasant to the political and social violence that has swept his home country of Peru over the past two decades. In some of his more recent work, Jiménez has also focused on social, political and cultural phenomena in North America with retablos that depict the human rights struggle in the United States and the plight of Hispanic immigrant who travel to El Norte. Examples of Jiménez's works may be found in the permanent collections of The Smithsonian Institution, the International Folklore Museum in Santa Fe, the Folk Art Museum in San Francisco and the Museum of Man in San Diego. In addition to illustrations of Jimenez's most important works, this volume contains interviews with the artist and essays by historians, art historians and anthropologists specializing in Latin America that describe his fascinating life's journey from Andean peasant to successful artist as well as evaluating the significance of his art.