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The Fine Arts Center is committed to collecting and preserving great works of art for the enrichment of present and future generations. To further this goal, the Museum continues to add significant works of art to its permanent collections, across all genres. In celebration of this effort, the Museum is pleased to announce the accession of Involuntary Kamekazi by Luis Cruz Azaceta. Azaceta’s work is in some of the most prestigious collections in the world, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Miami Art Museum, the Smithsonian Institution, and many more. This important work of art is now on display at the Fine Arts Center.
Cuban-born Luis Cruz Azaceta (b.1942) is one of the most accomplished Latin American artists today. He moved to the US in the 1960s as part of the massive exodus that came after Fidel Castro came to power in 1959. Azaceta lived in New York City for many years, relocating to New Orleans a few years ago. The artist is considered one of the main Latin American exponents of the Neo-Expressionist movement that emerged in the late 1970s and dominated the art market in the 1980s. Neo-Expressionist works were characterized by a rough, violent approach to painting. Artists returned to portraying the human body and other recognizable objects, in reaction to the remote and introverted abstract art production of the 1970s. Luis Cruz Azaceta portrays the social tribulations surrounding us, and the dark side of life. The bright colors in his work emphasize the emotional power of his representations, whether they are depicting the hard life of those affected by homelessness, AIDS, exile, or violence. Artists of this generation shared a personal sense of displacement and alienation. Azaceta is known for his powerful self-portraits in which he appears as a victim of the urban environment and the world around him. In Involuntary Kamekazi the artist appears as a human bomb, bound with ropes. In Azaceta’s world, mankind is beset by random violence, calculated brutality and isolation. Yet throughout, his dejected figures retain their humanity and even exhibit a bit of self-mocking irony. This latter quality rescues the works from over-sentimentality and imparts them with a twisted sense of hope. |
| Luis Cruz Azaceta, Involuntary Kamekazi, 1996 Mixed media on wood 2007 Museum Acquisitions Fund ”I paint what I see around me, and I look with an accusing eye at what man has created...I am just a filter, a many-colored voice ... I paint to kill La Muerte (Death), and also to kill cruelty, injustice, violence, ignorance and hypocrisy.” |
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