Luchita Hurtado

Hurtado was born in Maiquetía, Venezuela, on October 28, 1920. She emigrated with her mother and sister to New York City when she was eight years old, while her father stayed in Venezuela.[7] She studied fine art at Washington Irving High School and volunteered at La Prensa, a Spanish-language newspaper where she met her first husband, a Chilean journalist named Daniel de Solar. The couple married when Luchita was 18.[4] It was through him that she was introduced to many Latin writers and painters, such as Rufino Tamayo.[1][4] She divorced de Solar in 1942. She subsequently married Wolfgang Paalen, an artist and collector, after being introduced to him by Isamu Noguchi. However, their marriage fell apart shortly after her son from her first marriage, Pablo, died of polio. She wanted to have another child, while Paalen did not.[4]

In 1945, she made the painting that is recognized as the first in her career, and began freelance work as an illustrator for Condé Nast and as a muralist for Lord & Taylor in New York.[5][4][8] During this time, her circle of fellow artists expanded. One such connection she made was with Ailes Gilmour, who had roomed with Hurtado and de Solar when they were still married. Gilmour was the half-sister of Isamu Noguchi, so Noguchi and Hurtado became close, often visiting galleries together.[4]

Prior to 1998 Hurtado's work was largely unknown outside of Los Angeles.[4] At that time curators going through the estate of her third husband, the painter and art teacher Lee Mullican, uncovered a number of paintings signed "LH" that were not recognized as his work.[9] From there, the paintings made their way to the hands of Paul Soto, founder of Park View, a two-year-old apartment gallery a few blocks from MacArthur Park in Los Angeles, and her first solo gallery exhibition since 1974 was held there.[1]

Hurtado engaged with different styles that drew elements from 20th-century avantgarde and modernist art movements such as Surrealism, abstraction, and Magical Realism. Among her most well-known works is the ‘I Am’ series of the 1960s: self-portraits that Hurtado painted by looking down at her own body, often in closets as it was the only place she could work in between child-rearing and managing the home.[10] Later works show her environmental concerns; recurring motifs include humans merging with trees and texts including ‘Water Air Earth’ and ‘We Are Just a Species’.

Christopher Knight said of her work: "Her drawings' loosely Surrealist forms recall dense pictographs from a variety of cultures, ancient and modern. Among them are prehistoric cave paintings, Northwest and Southwest tribal art, pre-Columbian reliefs, and the abstract paintings and sculptures."[11]

Hurtado's work was included in the Hammer Museum's Made in L.A. exhibition in 2018.[5] Several visitors asked the curators if her birth date was incorrect because the work seemed contemporary.[12] She remained active in the arts until her death, with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art exhibiting a key career survey of hers in February 2020.[1] In 2019, she was named to the Time 100 list of influential people.[13]

Despite receiving belated recognition for her work, Hurtado did not harbor feelings of resentment for that fact. In a 2019 interview with fellow artist Andrea Bowers for the magazine Ursula, she surmised, "Maybe the people who were looking at what I was doing had no eye for the future and, therefore, no eye for the present".[1]

In 2019, Hurtado was listed in TIME 100: Most Influential People. Writing about her work, curator Hans Ulrich Obrist said that Hurtado’s ‘masterly oeuvre offers an extraordinary perspective that focuses attention on the edges of our bodies and the language that we use to bridge the gap between ourselves and others. By coupling intimate gestures of the body with expansive views of the sky and the earth, Luchita maps a visceral connective tissue between us all.’[14]

• Hauser & Wirth, New York, United States, Luchita Hurtado Together Forever, September 10 - October 31, 2020[15]
• Serpentine Sackler Gallery, London, United Kingdom, I live I die I will be reborn, May 23 - October 20, 2019[16]
• Hammer Museum, Made in L.A. 2018, Jun 3 – September 2, 2018[5]
• Annenberg Community Beach House, Santa Monica (2017)[17]
• Park View Gallery, Los Angeles (2016)[18]
• Night Club Gallery, Chicago (2016)
• Carnegie Art Museum, Oxnard, California (1994)
• Grandview Gallery, The Woman's Building, Los Angeles (1974)
• Tally Richards Gallery, Taos, New Mexico (1970)
• Paul Kantor Gallery, Los Angeles (1953)

Hurtado's work is in the collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art[19] and the Museum of Modern Art.[20]

Hurtado moved to Los Angeles with fellow artist Lee Mullican in 1951. They later married that same decade,[4][21] and remained married until his death in 1998.[1] Together, they had two sons: Matt Mullican, a New York-based artist,[4] and John, who works as a film director.[1]

Hurtado died on the night of August 13, 2020, at her home in Santa Monica, California.[4] She died of natural causes, just 76 days short of her 100th birthday.[1]

• Art in the San Francisco Bay area, 1945-1980: An Illustrated History; Thomas Albright (p. 41) University of California Press, 1985
• Luchita Hurtado in the LA Times