Luis Cruz Azaceta

George Adams Gallery is pleased to present Loose Screws (1974-1989) a survey of works on paper and paintings from the 1970s and 80s by Luis Cruz Azaceta. This is Azaceta's seventeenth exhibition with the gallery.

Luis Cruz Azaceta (b. 1942) was born in Havana, Cuba, and emigrated to New York at 18 in 1959 after experiencing the Cuban revolution's violence. He worked odd jobs and earned a BFA from the School of Visual Arts in 1969. His early work, marked by cartoon-like caricatures, addressed moral and ethical issues, focusing on urban violence to inspire empathy and using humor to mask the atrocities he witnessed. In 1975, Azaceta debuted his "Subway Series" at Allan Frumkin Gallery, depicting subway passengers as animal-like creatures shaped by a harsh environment.

In the 1980s, Azaceta continued to depict the dark realities of New York inner-city life, focusing on marginalized people in a raw, expressionistic style. Responding to the AIDS crisis, he created large-scale paintings illustrating the toll in human lives with piles of skulls and ticking clocks. His sympathetic approach often included self-portraits, equating himself with those affected to convey empathy.

Luis Cruz Azaceta currently lives and works in New Orleans. Azaceta has exhibited internationally and was the subject of a career retrospective organized by the American Museum of the Cuban Diaspora, Miami in 2016. He has been the recipient of several major grants and awards including a Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Grant in 1985, a Mid-Atlandtic Grant for special projects in 1989, and a Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant in 2009. His work is included in major public collections such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Austin; El Museo de Barrio, New York; the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC; the Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento; and the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo, Monterrey, Mexico, among others.