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Carlos Luna (Artist)

Carlos Luna (born 1969 in Pinar del Río, Cuba) is a contemporary Cuban-American painter, sculptor, printmaker, and ceramicist.

Early life

Carlos Luna has always been an artist; he recalls making a painting of his mother at the age of seven. His first few years were full of vibrant, loving, and defining memories because of his grandmothers, Juliana Sanchez, his maternal grandmother, who helped him believe in himself and find the confidence and love for who he is and where he comes from. Along with Ramona Padura, his paternal grandmother who would sing and dance around the house something Carlos picked up and now does while working and in his everyday life.

Because of his early vocation for the visual arts, Carlos Luna was admitted at the San Alejandro Academy of Fine Arts in Havana. He then transferred to The National School of Visual Arts (ENAP) and later to the Higher Institute of Art, both also in Havana.

Work

One of the foremost contemporary Cuban painters, Carlos Luna is part of a generation of Cuban artists who embrace their strong heritage and traditions but have reinvented themselves along the way.

Luna tells stories and relates fables through his detailed and richly painted canvases and mixed-media works on paper. Citing Rufino Tamayo and Wifredo Lam as major influences on his work, Luna is culturally attuned to shifts in the social and political environments in Cuba and Mexico, as well as the humanity that makes these countries so vibrant (the artist lived and worked in Mexico for 13 years after leaving Cuba, before settling in Miami). With their bold lines, busy compositions and intense reds and blacks, Carlos Luna’s paintings look as though they should be spray-painted on a wall. Yet they also pack enough mythic content to befit some sort of temple. The essence of Luna’s style is his X-ray vision. His creatures are often silhouettes that outline bodily frameworks. The figures pivot on visible joints and circular forms, or reveal stars burning inside.

Exhibitions

Among more than 60 exhibitions in museums and institutions throughout the country are the Pablo Picasso Ceramics / Carlos Luna Paintings Show (NSU Art Museum, Fort Lauderdale, FL) ; Carlos Luna: The Great Mambo (Museum of Latin American Art, Long Beach, CA) ; American University Museum (Washington, D.C.) ; Green Machine. The Art of Carlos Luna (Frost Art Museum, Miami, FL) ; Deep Line, Drawings by Carlos Luna (Boca Raton Museum of Art, Boca Raton, FL)   ; Polk Museum of Art (Lakeland, FL) ; and Heather James Fine Art (Palm Desert, CA).

Carlos Luna has maintained an active presence in numerous international shows in Latin America and Europe. The interest in Carlos Luna's work is also evident in the growing demand for it at auctions all over the U.S. and especially at the major auction houses in New York.

References