Born in Maiquetía, Venezuela, in 1920, Luchita Hurtado committed almost eighty years of her art practice to the research of universality and transcendence. Expanding her creative vocabulary through a coalescence of abstraction, mysticism, corporality, and landscape, the breadth of her work with unconventional techniques, materials, and styles testifies to the multicultural and experiential environments that molded her life and career. In 1928, Hurtado immigrated to the United States and settled in New York City, where she studied at the Art Students League. She moved to Mexico City in the late 1940s, then to San Francisco Bay in the following decade. She finally settled in Santa Monica, California. Beginning in the 1970s, Hurtado and husband Lee Mullican made frequent trips to Taos, New Mexico on their way to visit Mullican’s family in Oklahoma; and eventually built a second home in the village of Arroyo Seco. The life-changing impact of the artist’s time in New Mexico and persisting devotion to the enchantment of Taos are explored in Luchita Hurtado: Earth & Sky Interjected.
In 2019, Hurtado was listed in ‘TIME 100’ as one of the most influential people and received the Americans for the Arts Carolyn Clark Powers Lifetime Achievement Award. Hurtado’s first solo museum exhibition, ‘I Live I Die I Will Be Reborn’, opened at the Serpentine Sackler Gallery in London in 2019 when the artist was 98 years old. The exhibition then travelled to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in February 2020. Hurtado died this same year.
Luchita Hurtado: Earth & Sky Interjected is made possible by the generous support of Anonymous, National Endowment for the Arts, Hauser & Wirth, 203 Fine Art, Sheree Livney and Steve Hanks, Charles Hill, Kaye and Thomas Tynan, Aaron Payne Fine Art, Debi Vincent and Chokolá, Dora and Carl Dillistone, Ms. Bornstein, Happy Price, Barbara Zaring, Laurie Medley and Randall Johnson, and Romy and Carl Colonius.
Luchita Hurtado, Encounter, 1971. Oil on canvas. 127 x 243.2 cm / 50 x 95 3/4 inches; 130.5 x 246.7 x 5.7 cm / 51 3/8 x 97 1/8 x 2 1/4 inches (framed). © The Estate of Luchita Hurtado. Courtesy The Estate of Luchita Hurtado and Hauser & Wirth. Photo: Jeff McLane.
Luchita Hurtado, Mascara, 1975. Oil on canvas. 68.6 x91.4 cm / 27 x 36 inches, 82.2 x 104.8 x 5.1 cm / 32 3/8 x 41 1/4 x 2 inches (framed). © The Estate of Luchita Hurtado. Courtesy The Estate of Luchita Hurtado and Hauser & Wirth. Photo: Jeff McLane.
Luchita Hurtado, Untitled (Match triptych), c. 1970s. Oil on canvasette, 3 parts. Each: 50.2 x 40.6 cm / 19 3/4 x 16 inches; Each framed: 55.2 x 44.5 x 5.1 cm / 21 3/4 x 17 1/2 x 2 inches. © The Estate of Luchita Hurtado. Courtesy The Estate of Luchita Hurtado and Hauser & Wirth. Photo: Jeff McLane.
