January 31 - April 6, 2019
New York, 69th Street
For more than seventy years, Los Angeles-based artist Luchita Hurtado has merged abstraction and representation with mystical effect, exploring connections between the body and its larger context – nature, the environment, and the cosmos – in an effort to express universality and transcendence. ‘Dark Years,’ Hurtado’s first solo exhibition with Hauser & Wirth, focuses on the artist’s early works from the 1940s to the 1950s, a period defined by prolific experimentation. Comprising of crayon and ink paintings on board and paper, graphite and ink drawings, and oil paintings on canvas, the works on view range stylistically from surrealist figuration and geometric patterning to biomorphic forms executed with expressive acuity. Together, they underscore the vast scope of Hurtado’s early expression and illuminate the origins of an artistic output that would continue to evolve for decades to come.
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Join us for the opening reception of ‘Luchita Hurtado. Dark Years’ at Hauser & Wirth New York, 69th Street. For more than seventy years, Luchita Hurtado has explored connections between the body and its larger context – nature, the environment, the cosmos – in an effort to express universality and transcendence. In her work, abstraction and figuration merge to mystical effect. Her multicultural life and career are reflected in the eclectic mediums and formal techniques of her oeuvre. Born in Caracas, Venezuela, in 1920, Hurtado immigrated to New York in 1928 and later lived in Mexico, the American Southwest, and Northern California. ‘Dark Years’ focuses on the artist’s early works from the 1940s to the 1950s, a period defined by prolific experimentation. The paintings and drawings on view range stylistically from surrealist figuration and geometric patterning, to biomorphic forms executed with expressive acuity. Assembled, they illuminate the emergence of a remarkable visual language and underscore the significance of Hurtado’s unique artistic contributions. ‘Dark Years,’ Hurtado’s first solo exhibition with Hauser & Wirth, will be followed in May 2019 by her first solo institutional exhibition at the Serpentine Sackler Gallery, London.
Born in Maiquetía, Venezuela, in 1920, Luchita Hurtado dedicated over eighty years of her extensive oeuvre to the investigation of universality and transcendence. Developing her artistic vocabulary through a coalescence of abstraction, mysticism, corporality and landscape, the breadth of her experimentation with unconventional techniques, materials and styles speak to the multicultural and experiential contexts that shaped her life and career. Hurtado emigrated to the United States in 1928, settling in New York where she attended classes at the Art Students League. She relocated to Mexico City in the late 1940s and then moved to San Francisco Bay in the following decade. Eventually, Hurtado settled in Santa Monica, California and frequently visited her second home in Taos, New Mexico.
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