Provenance: Private Collection, Manila

ABOUT THE WORK

          Back in the 1980s, Arturo Luz began a journey across Southeast Asian countries as a personal artistic pilgrimage.  With a simple camera with him, he took usual touristic shots done by  travelers, but his fascination in the majestic yet derelict buildings and temples forced him  to take a serious second look. 
          Part of his “Cities of the Past” series featuring Rajasthan, India’s Desert Moon, Luz builds  his own utopia with grand architecture of ancient structures flourishing with domes and  transforms them into elegant minimalist edifices that sports his signature geometric style.
          As how the artist perfectly narrated it: “When I say landscape in Rajasthan, you won’t see them there… These architectural paintings, which I call Cities of the Past series — are imaginary  landscapes, recollections of my Asian pilgrimages. They have one common element: they are not literal, but rather composite images from memory.  They are imagined, transformed,  invented. None directly based on one source.”