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Artist: Arturo Luz (Filipino/ b. 1928) Title: Dawn in Rajasthan Medium: Oil on Canvas Board Size: 22 x 26 inches (unframed) Signature: Signed Lower Right and dated 2014 Condition: Good - Some dings around edges Provenance: Private Collection, California Biography: Arturo Luz is a Filipino modern artist best known for his minimalist, geometric, and abstract styles of art and his animated paintings of circus performers and musicians as well as his revered cityscape series. He is considered a pioneer of the Philippine Neo-realist movement (1950s-1960s) along with fellow Filipino artist Fernando Zobel de Ayala, for their adoption of a modernist approach to interpreting daily life in their native land. Many of these two artistsÕ works are now considered masterpieces. In the later years of LuzÕs career he also received recognition and praise for his sculptures, murals, photographs, and general taste in design. Although many of LuzÕs works include only the essential elements of lines, curves, and a few toned-down colors, the Filipino people continue to show enthusiasm, devotion, admiration, and curiosity for them. Luz won the distinction of being designated National Artist of the Philippines, the highest artistic honor in the country, for Visual Arts in 1997. Luz was born on November 20, 1926 in Manila. He studied painting first in the Philippines, then the United States, Europe, and again in the United States in the following order: the School of Fine Arts at the University of Santo Tomas in Manila; under scholarship at the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland, California; the Brooklyn Museum Art School in New York (1950); and the AcadŽmie de la Grande Chaumire in Paris (1951). Luz began exhibiting his works as a college student and received his first award at the annual art contest sponsored by the Art Association of the Philippines. He became known on the Philippine art scene when he held his first solo exhibition in 1951 at the Manila Hotel, following a previous exhibition of his drawings at the Raymond Duncan Gallery in Paris. Luz spent 1954 in Spain and in 1955 exhibited his work at the Metropolitan Museum in Manila. He married artist Tessie Ojeda Luz and in 1960 established the renowned Luz Gallery in Manila. Throughout its history the Luz Gallery displayed many exhibitions important to the modern art movement, assisted and influenced up and coming Filipino artists, and caught the attention of important collectors looking for the next artistic trend. LuzÕs early works were figurative with his later works evolving into further abstraction, with forms and shapes losing identifying characteristics as he defined his style. Luz said, ÒI cannot paint flowers. They are by nature too decorative and pretty. I like things that are very stark, elemental, simpleÑlike a stone or a shell.Ó One of his most celebrated series is the beloved cityscapes, which was inspired by his many travels to the historic and ÒlostÓ cities throughout Asia. Using his vivid and wild imagination, Luz transformed architectural elements, buildings, and temples into circles, rectangles, lines, and colors. In 1969, considered late in his career to start practicing another genre, Luz began experimenting with sculptural abstraction using metal, concrete, wood, and marble. He continued the Neo-realist themes of his paintings, along with linear simplicity and geometric form, in his sculptures. From the 1970s to 1980s Luz served as the founding Director of Art at the Museum of Philippine Art (MOPA) where he gathered an impressive collection of modern Philippine art. The artistÕs photographs, especially those of his travels during the 1990s, were often used as inspiration for later paintings. For further photographic inspiration Luz often studied the paintings and prints of Italian artist Giorgio Morandi for their simplicity in content and technique. The artist describes his paintings as Òsemi-representational, semi-abstractÓ. Fernando Zobel de Ayala, a fon