Jim Amaral (born 3 March 1933) is an American-born Colombian artist known for his drawings and bronze sculptures. Over a career that spans more than half a century, Amaral has also worked on painting, etchings, collages, furniture design, assemblages/objects, and artistâÂÂs books. He has been recognized for his draughtsmanship and refined technique. While his work does not necessarily belong to a style or movement, it has been linked to surrealism and ancient Greek sculpture. Amaral has stated of his work: "I am only trying to understand the world, to live through my painting. I am trying to understand certain mysteries, such as the energies of life and death, the loneliness of a man (...) I paint what people can reflect upon, so that what stays with the spectator is not only the visual impact".
In 2013-2014, he was chosen to produce the graphic imagery for the VIII in Colombia, organised by the Salvi Foundation. His large scale bronze sculptures are located outdoors in different sites in Bogotá, Colombia, such as in the garden of the National Museum and, since 1996, at the entrance to the Bolsa de Valores de Colombia BVC on Carrera Séptima (3 bronze sculptures Women with wheels, 1994). In 2013 the artist published a calendar called Aguas Turbias with a collection of 14 drawings from a series with the same title.
Amaral was born in 1933 in Pleasanton, California, USA. His father was Portuguese and his mother was American of Italian descent. Amaral grew up in a rural environment in Pleasanton and remembers that period as "living in an interior exile". As a teenager he wrote poetry.He studied for two years at the University of Washington, Seattle (1952âÂÂ53), covering subjects including the history of art and architecture. In 1954 he graduated with a bachelor of arts degree at Stanford University, and decided on a career in the arts. He continued his postgraduate studies at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan (1954-55), where he met the Colombian visual artist Olga de Amaral, whom he married in Colombia in December 1957.
From 1955 to 1957, he completed military service in the Philippines with the U.S. Navy. In 1958 he moved to Bogotá, where he started working with a furniture and interior design company. Following the birth of his son, Amaral decided to become a full-time artist. He began casting bronze sculptures and making collages and abstract drawings. In 1960 his daughter was born. From 1966 to 1967 the Amaral family moved temporarily to New York. In 1967, after moving back to Colombia, Amaral traveled to the US again to teach drawing at the Penland School of the Arts and Crafts in North Carolina. In the same year he also started teaching drawing at the Universidad Jorge Tadeo Lozano in Bogotá. In the years 1970-1972 the Amaral family traveled around Europe, settling down for a longer period in Paris, where in the fall of 1971, at the , Amaral showed his work for the first time in Europe. The exhibition brought him critical acclaim. He traveled to Paris again for longer periods in 1974-1975 and 1979-1980. In 1989 Amaral taught drawing at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Currently he lives with his wife in Bogotá and works in Casa Amaral.
In his first solo show in 1962 at the Vorpal Gallery in San Francisco, Amaral exhibited small ink drawings humorously depicting erotic themes. This took place as cultural attitudes towards sex were changing. Amaral experienced depression during this period, and a psychoanalytic treatment resulted in a series of "psychological" drawings.
In 1964, he had his first solo show in Colombia, in GalerÃÂa El Callejón, where he exhibited drawings, collages and oil paintings. Toward the end of the 1960s, Amaral worked increasingly with erotic themes and in 1970 participated in a group exhibition entitled El erotismo en el arte at the GalerÃÂa Belarca in Bogotá. In 1972, at the same gallery, he showed drawings in a new technique that he started to develop earlier in Paris - a mix of pencil and watercolour on paper treated previously with gesso.
During the 1970s Amaral exhibited in France, Italy, Sweden, Germany, and Belgium. During his Parisian period, he found popularity and acclaim from authors like Jacques Leenhardt and . His drawings from the 1970s often treat subjects in an erotic and sensual manner with a realistic style. He said: "I hear people saying that my artworks are erotic. I don't think so. But then I am surprised - almost confused - when I see how annoyed people get when they see a penis". He typically depicts fragmented body parts, human sexual organs, flowers that bloom lips or ears as petals, and biomorphic beings. Invisible Flowers is a key work from this period; its title alludes to Invisible Cities, written by his friend Italo Calvino. His work from this period also includes surrealist-influenced collages and assemblages with antique boxes, old photographs, antique books, and antique colonial furniture.
In 1980 Amaral returned to Bogotá. In the following two decades he worked with oil and acrylic paint, rendering meditative compositions with shadowed and earthy palettes. These include a series titled Mourning Fruit, which uses dried and mummified fruits placed on patterned surfaces with celestial bodies hanging in the sky. He said: "My paintings are dense, they have layers and layers of acrylic paint; thus, as I saturate the space, the possibility of the void expands (...) The fruit is a contradiction, because although itself it means life, at the same time it is dry, soft or stony, that is to say, lonely". The works reflect on death, decay and the passage of time.
In his early career, Amaral experimented with a variety of visual arts. In 1959 he had begun to make sculptures, but he found the process and the effects disappointing, so turned instead to collages and drawing. In 1989, on a trip with his wife Olga de Amaral to an exhibition site in Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA, he discovered the Shidoni Foundry and began to create new sculptures.
His cire-perdue bronzes from this period are characterized by mythological themes, metamorphosis, death, the human condition and the mysteries of the cosmos. His figures are often depicted with small heads, absent facial features, and gender ambiguities. The sensuality that characterized his earlier two-dimensional creations are reflected in the textures and refined patinas of his bronzes, in which he also explores solidity and monumentality. Eduardo Serrano considered the creatures rendered in these bronzes as expectant and concerned for the future with âÂÂcomposed anxiety.â William Ospina found irony in the sculptures.
In 2003 a Chilean photographer, , invited Amaral to participate in his non-profit project Taller experimental. Cuerpos pintados (painted bodies). Amaral decided to work with midgets from Santiago. hE painted the bodies of his models and characterised them as if they were angels, demons and cupids spreading love. In another, later series, he transformed them in live versions of some of his sculptures. The project aimed to appreciate the diversity of the human body.
More recently, Amaral has focused on watercolor and ink drawings, artist's books, and single-edition bronze sculptures. His bronzes have, in recent years, made a departure from human and animal figures towards desolate geometrical landscapes, ashen carts, and timeless machines that appear simultaneously futuristic and archaic.
Centre Pompidou, Paris, France.
Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York, USA.
Museo de Bellas Artes, Caracas, Venezuela.
Banco de la República, Bogotá, Colombia.
Museo de Arte Moderno, Bogotá, Colombia.
Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Bogota, Colombia.
Museo Nacional, Bogota, Colombia.
Museo Universidad Nacional, Bogotá, Colombia.
La Tertulia Museum, Cali, Colombia.