Luis Jimenez, one of the country’s foremost Latino sculptors died on Tuesday, the victim of an accident involving a piece of art he had been working on for over a decade; a monumental piece called “Mustang”. In a strange twist of fate, Jimenez was putting finishing touches on his piece when the unthinkable happened:

Tuesday morning, Jimenez and two assistants were working on Mustang in his Hondo, N.M., studio. Photographer Delilah Montoya, Jimenez’s close friend and UH colleague, said the horse’s head was finished, and he was beginning to give the body its final coat of paint.

A piece of the sculpture came loose from a hoist, “striking Jimenez and pinning him to the steel support,” the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office report said.

Jimenez had been involved in a decade-long battle with the commissioners of the piece for late delivery of Mustang, and was just about to free himself of the situation when the accident occurred.

Jimenez was committed to telling the story of his culture: a son of immigrants who crossed the border into the U.S., according to friends he never let that fall by the wayside:

“El Paso is the Ellis Island of the South, and Luis was the native son who never failed to make the right choice.”

Via / Houston Chronicle

Photo credit: Ricardo T Barros via ASMP.org