Writings
Critical Acclaim Unveiled: Diverse Voices on Carlos Luna’s Creativity
CARLOS LUNA: BEYOND THE SURFACE
One of the most dynamic voices in contemporary Latin American art today, Carlos Luna is featured in a monographic exhibition, Carlos Luna: Beyond the Surface, which will be...
Scott Schweigert
Curator of Art & Civilization
Reading Public Museum, 2023
LADIES FIRST: THE ART OF CARLOS LUNA
One of the foremost contemporary Cuban American artists, Carlos Luna is part of a generation of Latin Americans who embrace their strong heritage and traditions while reinventing themselves along the way. Luna tells stories and narrates fables through detailed...
GREEN MACHINE: CHRONICLES OF AN EVERYDAY LIGHTNESS
Born in 1969 in Pinar del Rio, Cuba, Carlos Luna explores across a far-ranging body of work how memories and imagination affect temporal perception. His art draws deeply upon the rich rural culture...
Bárbaro Martínez-Ruiz
Cape Town, South Africa, 2016
A STUDIO VISIT WITH CARLOS LUNA
I was fortunate to spend some time with Carlos Luna in his Miami studio. We discussed his process, the materials and techniques he has mastered, his artistic motifs, and the cultural context that...
A PERPETUAL MACHINE: THE ART OF CARLOS LUNA
History resides in a popular stanza, in a tired horse, in a ruined house, in the plains, the plants, the leaves, in a hero, in a martyr. One must learn history.[1] Manuel Moreno...
SPIRIT IN THE ART OF CARLOS LUNA
Introduction I flew into Miami through a summer storm to spend some time with Carlos Luna. The billowing dark clouds, thunder, lightening, powerful winds, and heavy rains rocked the plane....
THE UNSETTLING ART OF CARLOS LUNA, OR THE NAUGHTY BOY’S TRICKS
For a work of art to achieve the rare quality that allows it to be considered a classic it must be the result of the mastery of a craft possessed by the artist who created it. Throughout the...
CARLOS LUNA. AN ARTIST’S JOURNEY
Carlos Luna has long been concerned with the passage of time and the persistence of memory in works that are now recognizable for their prodigious use of popular Cuban imagery, Caribbean symbols, and...
THE ART OF CARLOS LUNA
The art of Carlos Luna is UNIQUE. For many reasons. He was born in the year ’69—erotic number—of the 20th century, in San Luis, Pinar del Rio, Cuba. There he...
CARLOS LUNA: A BOOK OF DAYS
Born in Cuba in 1969, Carlos Luna has always been an artist; he recalls making a painting of his mother at the age of seven. His prodigious talent was recognized and nurtured from an early age, as he...
THE TREE OF LIFE: REAL AND FANTASTIC
The imagery of Carlos Luna is filled with complex patterns and a wealth of detail that serve as the setting for figures, objects, animals, and other arcane symbols that both emerge and merge in his...
HALF-MOON WITNESS CARLOS LUNA DIGS FOR THE SPIRITUAL IN ALL THINGS ANIMATE AND INANIMATE
As intensely as I admire "Pablo Picasso Ceramics/Carlos Luna Paintings," the splashy new exhibition at the Museum of Art/Fort Lauderdale, I can't help but wonder whether a lot of people...
PABLO PICASSO CERAMICS | CARLOS LUNA PAINTINGS A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH
It is sometimes difficult to reconstruct the birth of an idea. Showing the paintings of contemporary artist Carlos Luna (b. Cuba, 1969) alongside the ceramics of Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) is one of...
CARLOS LUNA: CUBAN ARTIST AT THE CROSSROADS
Who is the artist Carlos Luna? Carlos Luna would say that he is a Cuban artist, and this is true in the sense that he was born on the island in 1969, in the tobacco center of Pinar del Rio. He...
PICASSO-LUNA: THE CENTER, THE FRINGES…AND VICE VERSA
…the “center-periphery” model is a false interpretation of the history of...
A CONVERSATION WITH CARLOS LUNA. THE BIRD-OF-PARADISE AND ITS SHADOW
JR: How did Carlos Luna, the painter, emerge?CL: I'm going to confess something that I haven't made public before. Only a few people know about this situation; however, it may help to...
CARLOS LUNA: KEEP YOUR EYES ON ME
Viewers standing before Carlos Luna’s El Gran Mambo (2006, oil on canvas, 144" X 192") will confront a very clear order telling them what they must do. In Spanish, the text reads...
PAINTED MEMOIRS
Any artist is bound to paint aspects of his own autobiography and construct an iconography that is uniquely his own. Carlos Luna is such an artist. The Cuban-born painter moves the viewer through his...
CARLOS LUNA: AN ISLAND FOR THE ROAD
“Art is an epiphany in a coffee cup.” Elizabeth Murray Carlos Luna’s visual harvest abounds in exceptional qualities. First and foremost among these is his conscious decision...
A “COMPAY” WHO DANCES LIKE AN EGYPTIAN
What relation is there between a Cuban Compay and Amenhotep IV? Between an islander crowing and the god Horus? It would seem an imprudence to match such personages. However, such problem finds its...
CARLOS LUNA. THE ARTIST AS HE IS
When a painting of Carlos Luna is contemplated for the first time, its volumetric paradox assails and enhances the bi-dimension even though it is extremely turgid. The background perspective is often...
THE WORK OF CARLOS LUNA
The work of Carlos Luna constructs itself over the whole basic, residual repertory of Seventies Cuban art, more specifically on the Pop models of print-making of an emblematic and nationalistic bent...
CARLOS LUNA’S BESTIARY OR CALENDAR OF SAINTS
The child painter from the island of Cuba ransoms the contradictory remains of religions which his grandfather passed on him in extended litanies. A divine majesty which forgetfulness begins to erode...