(b. Bolivia, 1933). Part of the group of socially committed artists active after the Bolivian National Revolution in 1952, Imaná's work deals with class issues without stereotyping as much as did the work of his contemporaries. He painted murals in the Sucre Telephone Company (1955) and in the medical college in La Paz (1980). In these murals, Imaná depicted an Andean landscape to express both the solitude of the individual and the solidarity of mankind. He uses images of women in his work, associating them with the continuity of cultural tradition and Pachamama, the Andean earth-mother deity. In paintings such as His Solitude Pierces the Stone, Drop by Drop (1974), Imaná adopts the cruciform pattern seen in Pre-Columbian textiles from the Tiahuanaco culture. The emaciated figure refers to the open-mouthed mummies found in pre-Hispanic graves.
Sources: Edward J. Sullivan, ed. Latin American Art in the Twentieth Century. London: Phaidon Press, 1996. pg. 242.
