Remembering Luchita Hurtado, the brilliant Venezuela-born, American painter who passed away last week at the age of ninety-seven. In an interview for Elephant 42, Hurtado explained, “Art has always been part of my life, and I have always thought of it as a kind of diary of what I’m living through.” And this work is no exception. It is one of Hurtado’s I Am paintings made in the late sixties; a series that depicted her own nude body, seen from a standing viewpoint as she performed a variety of actions. “When I used my body [in my work], it was the idea of ‘that’s all you have’,” she told us. “You’re born and you live and then you die.”
