It's a Jungle out There

In honor of World Rain Forest Week, gaze at this lush painting by Alfredo Arreguín.

As a young man, Alfredo Arreguín worked on a construction project in the rain forest of the state of Guerrero, [Mexico] where he developed a respect and love for such lush environments. At the age of twenty-three, Arreguín moved from Mexico City to the United States to attend the University of Washington in Seattle.

The temperate rain forests of the Olympic Peninsula, located near his new home, rekindled his earlier Guerrero impressions. Since the death of the Brazilian environmental activist Chico Mendes, Arreguín has painted many lush and beautiful tributes to rain-forest ecosystems.

In this lush Eden populated by women and animals, Arreguín imagined a world in which God created woman before man. The dense patterns and angular details of the animals and vegetation recall Aztec sculpture of his native Mexico, and the camouflaged face of Mexican painter Frida Kahlo, a symbol of woman's inner strength, can be seen through the foliage in each panel.

This painting can be viewed in our traveling exhibition Arte Latino: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum, currently showing at the El Paso Museum of Art in Texas, through November 12, 2000.

Source: Virginia Mecklenburg. Arte Latino: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum (exhibition text, Smithsonian American Art Museum, 1999).Himilce Novas and Carol Wyrick. Bilingual Study Guide in Latino Art & Culture: From the Series America Past and Present. (Washington, D.C.: National Museum of American Art, 1996).

Pictured top: Alfredo Arreguín, born Mexico 1935, Sueño (Dream: Eve Before Adam), 1992, oil, 72 1/4 x 144 1/4 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase through the Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment and the Smithsonian Institution Collections Acquisition Program.

Pictured bottom: Alfredo Arreguín, Sueño (Dream: Eve Before Adam) (detail).