Take a look into the life and art of Luchita Hurtado

Nov. 12—Most of the people in Taos had no idea Luchita Hurtado was an artist.

Now internationally recognized, the artist who spent her summers beneath Taos Mountain is coming home to a solo exhibition.

The Harwood Museum of Art is showing "Luchita Hurtado: Earth & Sky Interjected" through Feb. 23, 2025.

The Venezuelan-born Hurtado discovered Taos while visiting friends with her third husband, the American artist Lee Mullican. The couple fell in love with the area and built a house in Arroyo Seco.

"She was always making," said Harwood curator Nicole Dial-Kay. "Sometimes, she would work in a closet so she didn't disturb her family."

The show features Hurtado's most important bodies of work, alongside those directly inspired by her time in Taos.

The artist began to visit Taos in the 1960s. Though she studied art as a young woman and made work throughout the duration of her long life, Hurtado's practice was relatively unknown until 2015. The Los Angeles County Museum of Art gave her a solo show and her fame erupted.

Her paintings often feature vibrant colors, organic forms and dreamlike imagery, inviting viewers to contemplate the complexities of existence and the natural world.

"I don't think she is in any (artistic) category," Dial-Kay said. "She met Diego Rivera, Man Ray and Frida Kahlo. There's definitely some surrealism and references to universal themes. There's references to what it means to be a woman and meditations on what it means to age."

Hurtado's painting "The Umbilical Cord of the Earth is the Moon" was part of her sky and skin series, Dial-Kay said.

"It looks like a hide stretched over the canvas. It's the juxtaposition of her body with the world. The umbilical cord is definitely connected to her as a mother. Later, she started talking about them as a view from the grave."

Hurtado expressed a similar theme in "Mascara."

"My interpretation is she's always looking at birds and these demarcations and visions," the curator continued. "It's about us as women — what we need to put out in the world — a mask or mascara."

"Encounter" was part of her "I am" series. It features a geometric rug with apples and pairs of feet.

"That is probably her best-known" painting, Dial-Kay said. "She was celebrating textile work. The apples — symbols of the fertility of women. She almost uses her body as a landscape. Her feet become rock structures."

During tough times, especially the death of her 5-year-old son from polio, Hurtado was known to say, "All I have is my body."

The artist challenged conventional perceptions of the self and society, offering a profound exploration of human consciousness and our place within the universe. Additionally, her feminist perspective surfaces in many of her works, which often depict the female body as a powerful and enigmatic force.

The exhibited works include paintings in oil, watercolor and acrylic and drawings in charcoal, ink, graphite and crayon.

"This exhibit unearths an important part of Taos' art history that has been uncelebrated," Dial-Kay said. "Taos is part of Luchita Hurtado's history, which is now internationally known. She will be remembered in the art history canon."

Hurtado came to the United States at the age of 8 and spent her formative years in New York living with her mother, siblings, aunts and cousins. Her mother worked as a seamstress, perhaps influencing Hurtado, who designed her own clothing throughout her life. She went on to take classes at the New York Art Students League. A lifelong traveler, Hurtado lived in the Dominican Republic, Mexico City, Rome and Chile, as well as in the U.S. cities of New York, Mill Valley and Santa Monica, California.

"My mother's art practice was extremely private. It was between her and the universe," said her son John Mullican. "She did it when we were asleep or when we were not at home. To me, it felt very magical and holy.

"Drawings or canvases would appear, seemingly out of nowhere, on her studio walls. I felt it was a connection to a creative source much bigger and much more powerful than she ever talked about or shared. It was her practice and no one else's, pure and simple."

In 2019, Hurtado received a lifetime achievement award from Americans for the Arts and was acknowledged as one of the year's most influential figures by TIME 100.