MANILA, Philippines — Arturo Luz painter, sculptor, designer, photographer and final of the terrific Modernists died on Wednesday evening. He was 94 several years aged.
Arturo’s daughter, Angela Luz, declared his passing on social media:
“(My father) peacefully joined his Creator at 8:45 this evening, and I stood by his facet as he took his very last breath. We could not have requested for something far more. God blessed my father with 94 of the most excellent several years on earth. He enriched our life with his artwork, with his incredible talent and his genius. He will be terribly missed, but will in no way be forgotten. His legacy will reside on, and will previous without end.”
And what a legacy it is.
The artist is recognized for his geometric, linear, minimalist artwork, normally distilling his subjects to their quintessence: road musicians, distributors, acrobats, cyclists,

carousels, imaginary landscapes and cities of the earlier. Strains, blocks of pink or black or silver, a throb of area — all coalescing toward a quietly startling natural beauty.
Arturo Luz was born in Manila on Nov. 29, 1926. He commenced his classes in portray less than Pablo Amorsolo, brother of National Artist Fernando Amorsolo. The late Sid Gomez Hildawa wrote for The STAR: “By his possess recollection, the selection to become an artist occurred to Arturo when, seated at the loved ones eating table right after lunch 1 sleepy afternoon, he drew a profile of his mother and was pleased with the result. He was 17 then and Manila was occupied by Japanese forces.”
The younger Arturo attended the University of Santo Tomas (UST) College of Good Arts, and among his instructors ended up Diosdado Lorenzo and Galo Ocampo. Luz then received a scholarship at the California School of Arts and Craft in Oakland for a a few-year diploma in art system. He ongoing his education and learning at the Brooklyn Museum Art Faculty in New York in 1950, and at the Academie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris in 1951.
It was in Paris that he had his first 1-person show of drawings at the Galerie Raymond Duncan in 1951. He held his second solo exhibition at the Manila Resort upon his return to the Philippines in the exact same year. It was Luz’s introduction to the community art scene, in which he would afterwards on develop into an influential, inspiring pressure. His early is effective were being figurative, acquiring been influenced by Neo-Realists, but — commencing in 1969 — his art took on a distinctive, a lot more refined arc.
Line, composition associations
The artist explained in an interview, “Why do I insist on making use of a topic when my operate is progressively getting to be extra and a lot more linear, far more and extra summary? The subject matter merely no lengthier appears to be essential. The important elements are line, composition interactions.”
It was this artistic approach that he would great-tune as a result of the a long time, developing an oeuvre of paintings, prints, sculptures, collages and photos that communicate an eloquence in austerity and simplicity. A body of perform with solid Zen and architectural influences.
Hildawa wrote: “Luz’s adherence to formalism merged with minimalist elegance and restraint has enabled him to arrive at his own signature fashion, distinct from individuals of acknowledged influences like Paul Klee, Frank Stella, Isamu Noguchi, Henry Moore and Anthony Caro, amid lots of others. This inventive type has likewise developed facet-by-side with modifying preoccupations — creative and otherwise.”
Luz also founded a gallery in 1960. For additional than 40 many years, the Luz Gallery would mount exhibitions, most of them centered on non-figurative art. From the 1970s to the 1980s, Arturo Luz was head of 3 premier art establishments: Style and design Middle Philippines, the Metropolitan Museum of Manila, and the Museum of Philippine Art. He resigned from these govt positions in the mid-1980s and started life as a total-time artist. In 1997, he was conferred the Order of Countrywide Artist for Visible Arts.
Longtime pal Sari Ortiga of Crucible Gallery says he was fortunate plenty of to have heard Luz share his creative philosophy and reveal how that excellent brain worked. “Arturo was the last of the Moderns, and his art blends easily in the modern artwork scene. He was forward of his time. He was a visionary.” Artwork critic Cid Reyes points out how Luz was the exemplar of traditional elegance and precision in Philippine portray.
Reyes describes, “Luz singlehandedly streamlined Philippine fashionable artwork, and swept absent all the visible excrescences and emotionalism that our native sensibility is heir to. Prolonged prior to minimalism grew to become a stylish buzzword, Luz had presently pared down form to its essence and tempered shade to its least resonant hue. His composition was never less than best, correct to the very last millimeter.”
Bob Dylan at the time sang about finding infinity in “every leaf that trembles, in each individual grain of sand.” Arturo Luz as soon as claimed that transformation informs his artwork. He painted what is important and weeded out the superfluous, with each individual stroke, each line turning out to be a thread to an elegantly unfolding universe.