This painting presents an area of white and an area of black. A fence-like band of crossed lines divides the composition into two distinct areas and suggests the theme of the work. The artist has written:
At the time I painted A Question of Color I was exploring the idea of fences as boundaries, symbols of power, human confinements, territorial spaces, and psychological limitations. . . .the painting deals with racism and I’m certain a lot of racial turmoil and incidents in N.Y.C. were in the back of my mind during this time.¹
Luis Cruz Azaceta strips his composition down to three simple elements – the two areas of color and the crossed lines dividing them. He has stated:
In my new work I’ve been involved in condensing ideas to [their] essence[s], depicting them with an economy of means with the hope that the results will be powerful and straightforward.
The artist has subtly modulated the white area through changes in tone and thick strokes of paint. Using layers of acrylic paint, the arrangement relies on contrasts of color, shape, and line to deliver its message. A Question of Color demonstrates Azaceta’s ability to combine abstract principles with social issues such as racism.
Luis Cruz Azaceta was born in Cuba in 1942. He graduated from high school during the Cuban revolution, had difficulty finding a job, and ended up as a clerk in a drug store. Although initially sympathetic to the new government, he eventually became disillusioned and, in 1960, at the age of eighteen, received a visa to settle in the United States. His parents and sisters followed several years later.
Azaceta settled with relatives in New Jersey. He worked in a factory, but was fired for unionizing factory employees. One day in late 1963, he wandered into an art-supply store. “I became an artist out of boredom,” he later said. Azaceta worked in a factory for three years while taking life-drawing classes at night. In 1966 he enrolled in art school full time, working as a library clerk at night. By the mid-1970s, Azaceta felt he had developed his own style, based on cartoon-like images. He has painted work with tormented figures to show brutality and call for compassion, saying, “I want to present the victim – that is always my theme.”²
1. All quotations, unless otherwise noted, are from a letter from Luis Cruz Azaceta to Alison de Lima Greene, curator of twentieth-century art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, November 9, 1990.
2. John Beardsley and Jane Livingston, Hispanic Art in the United States: Thirty Contemporary Painters and Sculptors (Houston, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 1987), pp. 146-48.
