Jim Amaral American, b. 1933

Over seven decades, Jim Amaral (b. 1933, Pleasanton, California) has resisted settling into a single medium or style, his work moving fluently – and prolifically – between sculpture, painting, etching, assemblage and drawing. Amaral studied art history at Stanford in the 1950s before undertaking formal artistic training at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan, where he met the Colombian artist, Olga de Amaral. Shortly after, in 1955, Amaral was drafted into the US Navy and stationed in Manila, Philippines, for two years, after which he moved to Bogotá and married Olga the same year, settling there permanently. He initially worked in furniture and interior design before dedicating himself fully to his own studio practice by 1959.

By the 1960s, Amaral had begun to develop his characteristic, deeply imaginative visual language of personal symbols, pulling from sources as disparate as pre-Columbian art, classical sculpture and Surrealism. Several extended visits to Paris during the 1970s sharpened this engagement, as did Amaral’s exposure to psychoanalytic ideas that, as for many artists in the period, suggested new channels to him for investigating the human psyche and the subconscious. This language finds its most sustained expression in his works on paper, through sensual and anatomical explorations of the human form and invented biomorphic shapes.

Now in his early nineties, Amaral is being discovered by new audiences, his impressive legacy interpreted and displayed in a fresh light. His work is held in major institutional collections, including the MoMA and Centre Pompidou, with ongoing institutional engagement across Brazil, Spain and the United States.