CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 2/18/2021

The extraordinary new oral autobiography of Luchita Hurtado

Featured spreads are from Hauser & Wirth's superb new scrapbook-like oral autobiography of Venezuelan-born American painter Luchita Hurtado, who died in 2020 at the age of ninety-nine, having achieved widespread fame only in the very last years of her life. This extraordinary document collects a series of deep conversations between Hurtado and longtime champion Hans Ulrich Obrist, along with an abundance of never-before-seen photographs and artworks, such as self-portraits and erotic drawings. "To have known Luchita Hurtado is to have known a miracle," Obrist writes in his Introduction. "An extraordinary artist with an innate sensitivity to the ever-changing world around her, Luchita—who was also a poet, ecological activist, world traveler, mother and fierce friend—possessed a kind of magic that extended to everything she touched, from her expansive, uncategorizable art work to the pinecones she would collect on walks in her Los Angeles neighborhood. Always responding to the world around her, Luchita mapped a visceral connective tissue between all of us, bridging the gap between self and others, between the future, the present, and the past."