Arturo Luz

Biography

In 1962, at the International Art Salon in Saigon, first prize went to an artist from Manila. It was Arturo Luz, who was then thirty-five.

He was born in Manila on 20 November 1926, the youngest child of Valeriano Luz and Rosario Dimayuga, both from the town of Lipa in Batangas province. His full name was Arturo Rogerio Dimayuga Luz. After the Second World War he took painting lessons from Pablo Amorsolo, the brother of Fernando Amorsolo. He studied briefly at the School of Fine Arts of the University of Santo Tomas in Manila, then went abroad: to the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland (1947–1949), the Brooklyn Museum Art School in New York (1949–1950) and the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris (1950–1951).

He began exhibiting while still a student. His early works are figurative: “Lavandera” (1946), “Bagong Taon” (1952), “Awit” (1953), “City” (1959) and the sculpture “Anito” (1960). His first drawings, according to critics, were playful linear works influenced by Paul Klee. In 1960 he had a show at the Art Association of Manila. From 1969 he turned to abstraction, and this period produced “Painted Steel” (1979), “Bagong Taon” (1997) and “Man with Guitar” (1997). His minimalist geometric works are built on a very economical use of means; critics see in them order, precision and an aspiration to an Asian modernist form. It seems to me that these descriptions are right in tone rather than in substance: the works are better judged by looking at them.

Awards followed one after another: a prize from the California Art Association, the Republic Cultural Heritage Award for Painting (1966), and the title “Outstanding Young Man in Art” from the newspaper The Manila Times.

In 1960 Luz opened his own gallery. The National Commission for Culture and the Arts holds that it turned the art gallery into a professional institution, while by other accounts it became one of the most prestigious in the country. Around 1970 he helped to create the modern art collection at the Cultural Center of the Philippines. He headed the Design Center of the Philippines, served in 1976–1986 as the first director of the Metropolitan Museum of Manila, and often took part in its exhibitions. By some accounts he was also a director of the Museum of Philippine Art. In 2007 his works were shown in the group exhibition “Cubism, the Other Shore” at the Maison de la culture du Japon in Paris.

In 1997 Luz was named a National Artist of the Philippines, the country’s highest honour in the arts.

His wife, Teresita Ojeda, was also an artist. Arturo Luz died on 26 May 2021, at the age of ninety-four.