Luchita Hurtado
Untitled
Untitled
$225,000
Luchita Hurtado
Untitled
1966
Oil on canvas
50.8 x 55.9 cm / 20 x 22 in (unframed)
54.6 x 59.7 x 3.8 cm / 21 1/2 x 23 1/2 x 1 1/2 in (framed)
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 speaks to the multicultural and experiential contexts that shaped her life and career.
‘Untitled’ (1966) is characterized by Hurtado’s energetic application of sweeping strokes of colour and dynamic patterning. Short, staccato lines of blue and green are vertically layered over thicker, meandering brushstrokes that shift from bright yellow to orange to light pink — a dazzling kaleidoscope of fragmented lines that prefigures Hurtado’s works from the 1970s, where the artist physically cut her canvases and stitched them back together.
‘You never stop drawing you never stop thinking looking living its all the same thing.’—Luchita Hurtado [1]
‘Untitled’ perfectly encapsulates the evolution of Hurtado’s early practice in the 1960s towards an exploration of geometric abstraction. Her artistic output from this period is characterized by a brightly hued palette with a striking expressive range, illustrated by the vibrant frenzy of lines in ‘Untitled.’
Underscored by a compelling sense of vivid pigment and animated linework, ‘Untitled’ is a meditation on the otherworldliness of abstraction and a testimony to Hurtado’s life-long engagement and investigation of formal technique, texture, and colour.
About the artist
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.