BY EDWARD J. SULLIVAN is much too complicated, sometimes too cerebral and, always, far too thoughtful to lend itself to easy scrutiny or understanding, and facile acceptance. My aim in this brief introductory essay is to enumerate certain links with wider trends in art out of which Amaral’s artistic persona grew, and to indicate some pathways that we might find useful in the ongoing process of decoding his highly personal visual language. I will attempt to suggest some of the sources of stimuli that helped to shape the artistic personality of Amaral by examining some of the contexts out of which his art emerged in the s and early s, principally in the U.S. and Colombia. Like all accomplished creators Amaral does not easily betray his foundational incentives in any ob- vious way. Nonetheless, considering the main currents as well as the personalities involved in the places where his career started may of- fer us some (often oblique) insights into the things that would have interested him (or the elements of art he may have rejected). While the authors of the essays in this book cover a great many themes, both empirical and theoretical, the art of Amaral provides a virtually unending source of subject to investigate and points on which to comment; from his enigmatic drawings of body parts to the equally inscrutable bronze sculptures of carts and chariots, seemingly encrusted with the patina of the ages, reminding us of the eerie rem- nants of the past found at Pompeii and Herculaneum. ese were on view in the artist’s spring, exhibition entitled “Chariots of Hu- mankind” at the Galérie Agnès Monplaisir in Paris. e sources of Amaral’s visual repertory are vast; he has long felt at ease to borrow and re-frame references from many contemporary and historical eras. We might justifiably state that his work belongs to a globalizing ten- dency. is was true even before the term “global” became the popu- lar (and over-used) catchphrase that it has become today. I would not hesitate to underscore the eclectic nature (in the most positive sense of this word nature of Amaral’s production) of his art as it crosses both real and imagined artistic borders and boundaries. From his earliest efforts in two and three-dimensions to his latest sculptures, his work has been nourished by the long history of art past and present. F R O M C A L I F O R N I A T O C O L O M B I A e present book (the first major monograph on the artist) is an important contribution to the relatively large body of literature on . # , –•. –€×€… cm, pencil and ink on paper (detail; see p. €).