Featuring previously unseen works, this exhibition centres on Luchita Hurtado's Sky Skin canvases. Beginning in the mid-1970s, Hurtado's gaze turned upwards, inverting the downward-facing perspective of her earlier I Am paintings. A selection of drawings merge the series, as the breast, stomach and knee viewed from a down-cast angle transform into rolling mountains in a continuation of the artist's imaginative and deceptive experimentation with figurative landscapes.
Hurtado's skies are often encircled by craggy earth, referencing the mountains of Taos, New Mexico where Hurtado spent her summers, as well as the hills of Santa Monica Canyon, where the artist resided the remainder of the year. The smooth and earthen landscapes open to masterful constructions of skies revealing the shape of stretched animal hides punctuated by airborne entities of clouds, moons, and feathers. 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.
Press release courtesy Hauser & Wirth.
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