I did many self-portraits. And then at one point I decided I would use letters, and I did…I started with a portrait that said, ‘I am.’ And I decided that was as much me as my real face and figure.

(Luchita Hurtado)

Over the course of her eight-decade career, Venezuelan-born, Los Angeles-based artist Luchita Hurtado (1920 – 2020) committed to a lifelong journey of personal and artistic evolution defined by ceaseless experimentation. The first exhibition devoted to the artist at Hauser & Wirth in Los Angeles, Yo soy (I am) will bring together paintings and drawings from a pivotal moment in Hurtado’s career: Inspired by the surge of feminist activism in LA, the artist held her first solo exhibition at the Woman’s Building in February 1974, debuting her Linear Language series of expressive, geometric word paintings. A half century on, Yo soy revisits that landmark presentation and includes never-before-seen works from the series it introduced. Through her vibrant, abstract canvases—some cut up and meticulously resewn—visitors will be able to experience the depth of Hurtado’s exploration of pattern, mysticism, the earth and the cosmos.

The 1970s were a period of intense productivity for Hurtado. Living in Santa Monica Canyon with her own studio and her children now grown, she found herself at the heart of a burgeoning women’s movement in Los Angeles, a collective awakening that profoundly shaped her artistic identity. As an original member of the Los Angeles Council of Women Artists, Hurtado later cited a seminal meeting of local women artists in 1971, organized by Joyce Kozloff, as a turning point in both her artistry and activism. There, Hurtado introduced herself to the group using her married name, ‘Mullican’. Her friend, the printmaker June Wayne, interjected: ‘Luchita what?’ The prompt led the artist to reintroduce herself as ‘Luchita Hurtado.’

This fabled account of self-renaming laid the foundation for her Linear Language series, which began with a self-portrait featuring only the abstracted word Yo. Hurtado created the subsequent works in this series between 1972 and 1974, in a process that relied upon speed of action in merging language with graphic patterns and textiles. Describing the technical innovations her series inspired, the artist explained:

To achieve quickness, the evenness and length of stroke I needed on large canvasses, I rigged up bottles with nozzles that became the brushes I needed. […] I painted large paintings, all messages, some right side up, some on their side, some cut, set apart, as life does, and sewed together again. Some were in layers, one atop the other.

Among works on view in the exhibition is Self portrait (1973), in which bold red, yellow, black and silver lines traverse every direction within sewn panels of varying sizes. Beneath the work’s intricate design lies the words—‘I Live I Die I Will Be Reborn’—that four decades later would serve as the inspiration for Hurtado’s 2019 retrospective at the Serpentine Galleries. In another piece on view from the original Woman’s Building exhibition, deep blue and purple patchwork obscures the title Earth and sky interjected (1973)—a work that likewise provided the title for a later exhibition, Hurtado’s 2024 – 2025 survey at the Harwood Museum of Art in Taos, New Mexico.