One Paraguayan artist was able to make her unique paintings come to life and reflect her culture and heritage. Edith Jiménez is a distinguished woodcut artist and painter who thrived in the early 20th century.
https://galeriaexaedro.com/edith-jimenez/
She was born to Eulogio Jiménez and Silvia González in Asuncion, Paraguay. Even at a young age, she showed great passion for drawing and painting, and her enthusiasm for art was further nurtured by her family – specifically her older sister. Together, they would visit local art museums, Edith was met with new and vast arrays of styles and techniques.
“Cuando niña, el mejor regalo que me podían hacer era un juego de acuarelas. Pintaba las cosas que veía sin ningún conocimiento, sin buscar nada en particular, por el simple gusto de hacerlo…La pintura era como un juego.” (link)
"When I was a child, the best gift I could receive was a set of watercolors. I painted the things I saw without any knowledge, without looking for anything in particular, simply for the pleasure of doing it... Painting was like a game."
It was at these museum visits where she first encountered Jaime Bestard’s drawings. Captivated by his vibrant colors and the expressive compositions, Jimenez felt a calling to become an artist.
In 1943, it was like a dream come true when Jimenez became a student under Bestard through pure determination and eagerness to learn. Like most artists, she started her journey with realistic drawings, which Bestard immediately scolded her for. As a beginner, she used light and vivid colors that paralleled her naive perspective on the role of art. Bestard taught her to make use of composition and colors, but most importantly, to not just copy what she sees – color builds distance and highlight the important. But most of all, he believed in reinterpretation and saw no value in copying exactly from life. Bestard’s disinterest in hyperrealism heavily inspired her abstract style later at the prime of her career.
https://gaelart.blogspot.com/2010/08/social-realism-paraguay-art.html
Edith Jimenez was a special artist that is most famously known for her color woodcut printings. This is known to be one of the hardest forms of printmaking, and woodcuts, in general, is very complex. Not only does it require accurate precision and time but also requires a lot of muscle to carve and chisel each line. Incredibly, Jiménez was originally taught only in painting. She completely self-taught herself woodcut printmaking.
In 1952, she had her first painting exhibition in the Agustin Barrios Gallery in the “Centro Cultural Paraguayo Americano”. Just a year later, she was nominated the official representative in painting in the second Biennial in São Paulo and became a co-founder of “Arte Nuevo”, a historic Paraguayan plastic organization organized in Palma Street, the center of Asunción. Many of her pieces during this time are characterized by explorations of language, subjectivity, and social realism through half cubism and semi modern.
La sangre en la madera (Blood in the wood), 1967.
Los dedos en la madera (Fingers in the wood), 1967.
https://hammer.ucla.edu/radical-women/essays/a-country-of-women
For more historical context, Paraguay faced Alfredo Stroessner’s dictatorship in the mid 1950s for 35 years in which their country faced death and torture. Consequently, these political events inspired darker themes in Jimenez’s paintings. In the woodcuts above, we can see her lack of color and abstract forms that shows the sadness and gravity of her life at the time.
But it was during this time that she started experimenting her style with semi cubism and combined different elements to make abstract painting.
Jimenez’s work was displayed in multiple places including Asuncion, São Paulo, Buenos Aires, Caracas, Montevideo, and even the countryside of Paraguay as she slowly began branching out her style. In 1956, she began her mentorship in the Brazilian Cultural Mission and just two years later, she received a scholarship to study engravings in the Modern Art Museum of São Paulo, all under Livio Abramo.
São Paulo Museum of Art: The Top Museum in São Paulo, Brazil
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%A3o_Paulo_Museum_of_Art
With no real experience or a mentor to help with engraving, she had to spend hours perfecting her craft in order to live up with the rest of Livio’s students. Each stroke and cut into the woodblock required much precision and patience, and she embraced this arduous process with unwavering determination.
Despite her initial difficulties, her relentless effort began to pay off. Edith's talent blossomed even more, and her work stood out among her classmates. Recognizing her potential and commitment, her one-year scholarship was extended to three, providing her with the opportunity to dive deeper into her craft.
During this extended period of study, Edith's artistic journey expanded even more. She collaborated with her mentor Abramo and fellow artist, María Bonomi, with whom she shared a vision and passion for engraving. Together, they founded the Engraving Studio, a creative hub where they could explore new techniques and push boundaries of their art. This gave Jimenez a chance to pass on her artistic knowledge to newer generations.
Edith Jiménez and Livio Abramo (1959)
Jiménez has received high recognition for her work and is part of prestigious collections, even outside of Paraguay, such as MoMA (The Museum of Modern Art) in New York, Estampa museum in Buenos Aires, and the National Library of Paris.
She died on October 7th, 2004 at 86 years old and left behind amazing creations and pieces for her the rest of the world to enjoy and solidified herself as a leading figure in the Paraguayan art scene.