Aztec Stories in Modern Mexico: An Inocencio Jiménez Chino Retrospective
Bedford Gallery presents the first survey of Inocencio Jiménez Chino's career, tracing five decades of amate bark painting from the Balsas River Valley of Guerrero, Mexico.
Bedford Gallery presents Aztec Stories in Modern Mexico: An Inocencio Jiménez Chino Retrospective, the first survey of the artist's career, on view April 18 through June 28, 2026. Spanning five decades, the exhibition traces Jiménez Chino's evolution from early works on board to the protest line drawings of the 1990s and the narrative amate paintings that document daily life in the Balsas River Valley of Guerrero, Mexico.
A&O PR has had the pleasure of working with the Bedford on strategy, messaging, media relations, and press placement for its programs and exhibitions since 2023. The Inocencio Jiménez Chino retrospective follows the recent presentation of Viola Frey: Foundations, which A&O PR also supported with communications strategy. Our strategic work has secured preview press for Aztec Stories in SF/Arts, as well as the April “Hit List” in Diablo Magazine, and inclusion in See Great Art by Chadd Scott.
Amate Paper Art and the Nahuatl Tradition
Amate paper is one of Mesoamerica's oldest materials. The word derives from the Nahuatl “amatl,” meaning paper or tree bark, and the Aztecs manufactured amate in more than forty villages before the Spanish conquest, producing an estimated 480,000 sheets annually for royal records, religious rituals, and codices. Colonial authorities banned its production, and the papermaking tradition survived only in remote mountain communities of northern Puebla and Veracruz, where Otomí shamans continued to produce it for ceremonial use.
The transition from ritual paper to painted art form began in the early 1960s, when Nahua villages in Guerrero adapted a longstanding tradition of painting ceramics with mythical fauna and flora to the new medium of bark paper. By the 1968 Mexico City Olympics, amate painting had become the primary economic activity in eight villages along the upper Balsas River valley, with families producing stylized birds, flowers, and village scenes in bright acrylics for the tourist market.
Inocencio Jiménez Chino
Jiménez Chino was born in 1950 in San Agustín Oapan, a Nahuatl-speaking village of approximately 1,500 people in the state of Guerrero. He is a corn farmer by primary occupation and self-taught as a painter. When amate painting arrived in his village and took over community life he was only twelve, working within the tourist trade for decades. He also pursued a parallel practice: ambitious, non-commercial paintings that accumulated on the brick walls of his home because no market existed for them.
A pivotal moment in his career came in 1990, when the Federal Electricity Commission announced plans to construct a hydroelectric dam near San Juan Tetelcingo that would have flooded more than a dozen Nahua villages. Jiménez Chino created drawings as part of a visual narrative opposing the project, developed in collaboration with anthropologist Jonathan D. Amith. The works were exhibited at the Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum in Chicago and Parc de La Villette in Paris. In 2024, Deep Vellum published Uncle Rabbit and the Wax Doll, a trilingual edition in Nahuatl, Spanish, and English illustrated by Jiménez Chino on amate bark paper.
Bedford Gallery and Retrospective
Aztec Stories in Modern Mexico is presented by Bedford Gallery as Jiménez Chino's first-ever retrospective. The exhibition includes paintings, video interviews, audio recordings, and the artist's tools, including his handmade brushes and amate canvases, alongside demonstrations of amate papermaking and brush construction. Together they offer visitors a view of both the finished works and the process behind them.
Visiting Bedford Gallery in Walnut Creek
The Opening Reception for Aztec Stories in Modern Mexico: An Inocencio Jiménez Chino Retrospective is Saturday, April 18, from 5:00 to 7:00 PM. Tickets are $5 general admission for ages 13 and up; free for children under 12 and Bedford donors.
On Tuesday, April 21, the gallery hosts Cocktails and Conversation with Inocencio Jiménez Chino and Jonathan Amith from 5:30 to 7:00 PM, an in-person program with the artist and his longtime collaborator.
Tickets for both the Opening Party and the conversation are available through the Lesher Center for the Arts.
The exhibition is on view April 18 through June 28, 2026. General gallery hours are Wednesday through Sunday, 12:00 to 5:00 PM. Bedford Gallery is located at 1601 Civic Drive, Walnut Creek, CA 94596.
What is amate painting?
Amate painting is a contemporary art form practiced in Nahua villages in the Mexican state of Guerrero. Artists paint in acrylics on handmade bark paper produced from fig and mulberry trees using a pre-Hispanic papermaking process that predates the Spanish conquest. The tradition of painting on amate paper emerged in the early 1960s and draws on older traditions of ceramic painting with mythical and natural imagery.
What is the Uncle Rabbit and the Wax Doll folktale?
Uncle Rabbit and the Wax Doll is a Nahuatl trickster tale passed down through generations in the Balsas River Valley. In the story, a clever rabbit outwits Uncle Coyote and then tricks Old Man Crocodile into giving him a ride across the river, before encountering a wax doll that turns the tables on him. The folktale has parallels in African and Southern U.S. trickster traditions and was recorded in Nahuatl by storyteller Silvestre Pantaleón Esteva and translated into Spanish and English by Jonathan D. Amith. Deep Vellum published the trilingual edition in 2024 with thirteen paintings by Inocencio Jiménez Chino, all of which are on view at Bedford Gallery.