This book accompanies Luchita Hurtado: I Live I Die I Will Be Reborn, the first career survey of paintings and works on paper by multifaceted artist Luchita Hurtado (Venezuela, b. 1920). Prior to 2016, the remarkable breadth of Hurtado’s eight-decade career was virtually unknown, as her works were kept in storage and out of public view for most of her life. 

Throughout her career, Hurtado has created an extensive body of paintings, drawings and prints that bear witness to a dedicated and intense engagement with the world around her. This is the first comprehensive and fully-illustrated publication on the artist’s practice, which follows the trajectory of her work through a selection of newly-commissioned texts and images of all works in the exhibition. Sarah Lehrer-Graiwer has written a contextual survey of the artist’s career and its unique course; artist Andrea Bowers has written a text on ‘The Equanimity of Luchita Hurtado’; Hurtado’s son, artist Matt Mullican, has written a series of short vignettes about his mother, whilst Barbara Stauffacher Solomon has provided a written response to an archival photograph, attesting to a lifelong friendship with Hurtado that has transcended their respective artistic practices. The book features a new interview between Hurtado and Serpentine Artistic Director Hans Ulrich Obrist, and an extensive timeline on the artist’s life collated by Marie Heilich.

Hurtado has lived and worked in Santa Monica since the early 1950s. In 2019 she was named to the Time 100 list of most influential people.