Provenance: The Luz Gallery

ABOUT THE WORK

Hailed as ”the painter's painter” by revered artist Fernando Zóbel, Arturo Luz's universal appeal comes from his unmatched command over his craft. With his brand of geometric abstraction, this modernist master proves that Minimalism is not merely a style but a strategy for distilling an experience or an object into its purest, most evocative language. In some abstract works, enough of a similarity has been retained to represent actual subjects. In others, original objects have been reduced to simple geometric shapes and can be barely identified unless the artist has named them his title — his concern being the rendering of the essence of the subject rather than the natural form itself. Arturo Luz created art through a disciplined economy of means, both his sculptures and paintings are characterized by simple lines and geometric forms. His masterpieces allude to the modernist virtues of competence, order, and elegance. The National Artist established his reputation around distinct visual worlds stripped of distraction and sentiment. They are deceptively simple and represent the artist’s never-ending search for the essential characteristics of the subject through a reduction of form and selective use of color. (P.I.R.)