Luchita Hurtado, an “overnight success eight decades in the making”, dies at age 99
By Eilís Doolan
On August 13, 2020, the art world mourned the death of painter Luchita Hurtado, who passed away in her Santa Monica home at the age of 99, only six months after a major survey of her career at the LA County Museum of Art (LACMA). A year ago, Hurtado was named in the Time 100 list of most influential people. 4 years earlier, Hurtado was living in near obscurity. Born in Venezuela but living in the United States since the age of eight, the painter embodies a rare phenomenon in the art world. At the age of 97, Hurtado achieved overnight success—despite painting for over 80 years and having counted Marcel Duchamp, Isamu Noguchi, Leonora Carrington, Andre Breton, and Elaine and Willem de Kooning as close friends. Carolina Miranda of the Los Angeles Times put it succinctly when she characterised it as “An overnight success that was eight decades in the making.”
Hurtado’s oeuvre, which spans various styles and techniques including Surrealism, Modernism, geometric abstraction and even environmental art, gives a rare glimpse into the work and life of an artist working throughout the entire twentieth century. Many of her works revolve around the human body, and its connection to the natural world.
Luchita Hurtado in her Santa Monica home and studo (Credit: Oresti Tsonopulos, courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth)
After painting for over eighty years, Hurtado first entered the public eye in 2016, when her work was exhibited at the Park View / Paul Soto gallery. Hurtado’s work had only recently been discovered, by chance, when curators cataloguing her late husband’s estate (U.S. painter Lee Mullican) stumbled upon her paintings. Before 2016, Hurtado’s last solo show had been at the LA Women’s Building, in 1974. Speaking of his decision to exhibit her work, Soto says: “I was like, these are incredible. I was surprised nobody was taking them seriously.” The show was completely sold out, and drew the eyes of several critics. However, it wasn’t until 2018 that Hurtado really burst onto the scene, after being described as the “hot discovery” of the trendy ‘Made in LA’ biennial at the Hammer Museum. The biennial included contemporary artwork by 32 artists working in LA. Hurtado was 97 years old at the time—a fact which one visitor assumed to be a mistake; After reading the wall text, which noted the artist’s birth year as 1920, the visitor contacted the museum to let them know of their “typo” – the artist painting these contemporary-looking works simply could not be that old.
Installation view of Luchita Hurtado’s career survey “I Live I Die I Will Be Reborn” at LACMA (Courtesy of Museum Associates / LACMA)
Hurtado’s success at the Biennial show lead to the 2019 exhibition of her work at London’s Serpentine Sackler Gallery titled ‘Luchita Hurtado: I Live I Die I Will Be Reborn’ – it was Hurtado’s first solo show at a public gallery, as well as her first UK solo exhibition. She was 98 at the time. The earliest works included in the exhibition stemmed from the 1930s, when Hurtado was just a teenager. Works from the 1940s and 1950s illustrated her experimentation with abstraction, while later works foreground the body more and more. Her paintings from the later 1960s and 70s, named the ‘I Am’ series, take the human body as the starting point for surreal landscapes. In these works, Hurtado looks down at her own body, depicting it from above. They are headless self-portraits painted without a mirror. In one work, Hurtado paints herself looking down at her nude body, standing on a Navajo rug. In another, she is eating strawberries out of a bowl, one of which has dropped to the floor. In other paintings from this time, three or four headless figures seem to be present, their nude feet visible on a vibrantly coloured indigenous rug. The portraits create a surprising sense of introspection, and, considered in their time, powerfully subvert the male gaze. What Hurtado depicts is a woman seeing her own body, and the ground under her feet, evoking the sensation of nude skin against roughly textured carpets. According to Anne Ellegood, co-curator of the ‘Made in LA’ biennial exhibition, these feminist works stand the test of time – they remain “fresh” and “in the moment,” even today.
Luchita Hurtado, “Untitled,” 1970 (Credit: Jeff McLane/Hauser & Wirth)
“She very much has had the life of an artist – but without the exhibition history.” – Anne Ellegood.
Until the last years of her life, Hurtado’s work was often overshadowed by the men she married. In this sense, her story is not dissimilar from other women artists working in the twentieth century. In 1928, Hurtado moved to the United States from Venezuela, settling in Manhattan, where she studied art at High School. Soon after graduating, Hurtado married her first husband, the Spanish journalist Daniel de Solar. It was through him that she became friends with the Mexican modernist painter Rufino Tomayo. Her marriage to de Solar didn’t last long, and he left Hurtado and their two children. Later, after being introduced to him by good friend and sculptor Isamu Noguchi, Hurtado married the Austrian painter Wolfgang Paalen. Together, Paalen and Hurtado moved to Mexico, where they moved in bohemian circles, engaging with other artists from Latin America and Europe. After Hurtado’s son from her first marriage, Pablo, died from Polio, her marriage with Paalen began to fall apart. Her third marriage was to the American painter Lee Mullican, with whom Hurtado had two sons. Her ‘I Am’ series of nude portraits was painted during this period – for the first time, Hurtado had her own studio space. She continued to paint, organising her artmaking around family schedules and children’s bedtimes. Up until 2016, Hurtado had exhibited her work only sporadically. Encouraged by Judy Chicago, her work was included in some shows in the 1970s and 1980s. In the 1980s, Hurtado was even invited to join the Guerilla Girls.
Luchita Hurtado with unfinished version of “Untitled,” completed in 1971. (Courtesy of Luchita Hurtado)
Hurtado’s most recent works illustrate an increasing engagement with environmental issues, making reference to the human life cycle as well as the human responsibility toward the natural world. In her own words, Hurtado proclaimed: “I like to be with nature in every way I possibly can. It is the only solution we have. Because we are a species.” In reference to Hurtado’s exhibition at the Serpentine, director Hans Ulrich Obrist hoped Hurtado’s art would serve as a wake-up call to visitors: “It breaks indifference” he says, “It will wake people up.”
Luchita Hurtado, I Live I Die I Will Be Reborn (Installation view, 23 May-20 October 2019, Serpentine Galleries) (Credit: Hugo Glendinning)
Until the very end of her life, Hurtado found herself simultaneously at the centre and at margins of the art world. Yet, she didn’t harbour any bitterness about her late success. For most of her life, Hurtado did not paint for commercial success, but for the necessity of her own art, and the pleasure in creating it. Speaking to Andrea Bowers for Ursula Magazine in 2019, Hurtado concluded: “Maybe the people who were looking at what I was doing had no eye for the future and, therefore, no eye for the present.”
Luchita Hurtado is survived by her two sons from her third marriage, Matt and John Mullican, as well as two grand-children. ‘Luchita Hurtado: I Live I Die I Will Be Reborn’ at the LACMA, a more expansive successor of the 2019 Serpentine show, was shut down early due to COVID-19. The show hopes to reopen later this year.
For a virtual view of the LACMA show, and to hear Hurtado in conversation with Hans Ulrich Obrist and Jennifer King, visit https://www.lacma.org/art/exhibition/luchita-hurtado-i-live-i-die-i-will-be-reborn.
Bibliography:
Miranda, Carolina A. “Why Luchita Hurtado at 97 is the hot discovery of the Hammer’s ‘Made in LA’ biennial show.” Los Angeles Times. Published 5 July 2018. Accessed 30 August 2020. https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/miranda/la-et-cam-luchita-hurtado-hammer-biennial-20180705-story.html.
Miranda, Carolina A. “Painter Luchita Hurtado, who became an art star in her late 90s, has died at 99.” Los Angeles Times. Published 14 August 2020. Accessed 30 August 2020. https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2020-08-14/painter-luchita-hurtado-dies-at-at-99-obituary.
Searle, Adrian. “Headless self-portraits from a face everyone knew – Luchita Hurtado review.” The Guardian. Published 22 May 2019. Accessed 3 September 2020. https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2019/may/22/luchita-hurtado-review-serpentine-sackler-gallery-london.
“Luchita Hurtado: I Live I Die I Will Be Reborn.” Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Accessed 3 September 2020. https://www.lacma.org/art/exhibition/luchita-hurtado-i-live-i-die-i-will-be-reborn.
“Luchita Hurtado: I Live I Die I Will Be Reborn.” Serpentine Galleries. Accessed 3 September 2020. https://www.serpentinegalleries.org/whats-on/luchita-hurtado-i-live-i-die-i-will-be-reborn/.