Provenance: A gift from the artist to Winner Foundation to benefit the Arroceros Forest Park

ABOUT THE WORK

Through the simplest of means and the most elegant of forms, National Artist Arturo Luz depicts a dynamic city that is at once old and new, at once classic and modern. Employing mostly diagonals and curves, the master makes his lines intersect, undulate, and dance, which culminate in the soaring outline of a city, its heart-stopping architecture. This quality is further emphasized by his use of a black and white palette — two of his signature colors — that allow the negative space to be an integral part of the composition. Shaded areas provide visual contrast, allowing the eye to rest on solid blocks of white. It is a work of quiet, unsparing beauty that only Luz’s visual language, honed through the decades, can make possible.