Luis Hernandez Cruz

Born in San Juan, Puerto Rico in 1936, Hernandez Cruz is a painter, printmaker, sculptor and draughtsman. He is known as being one of the most innovative exponents of Puerto Rican and Latin American abstract art. He studied painting at the University of Puerto Rico, received his BA in 1958, and completed his MA at the American University in Washington, DC in 1959. During the 1960s, he advocated for abstract painting in Puerto Rico, and co-founded Frente with artists Lope Max Díaz, Antonio Navia and Paul Camacho, with the aim of bringing together abstract and experimental painters and of renewing artistic institutions in Puerto Rico.

Hernández Cruz was also a founder-member and president of the Congress of Abstract Artists that took place in Puerto Rico in 1984. His work has been exhibited in Spain, Finland, Brazil, South Korea, Yugoslavia, Norway, Columbia and the United States. He has received numerous awards throughout his career, including First Prize for Urban Landscape from the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture in 1963, the UNESCO of PR Prize in 1976 and the International Association of PR Art Critics Prize for an Individual Show in 1991. Source: Reyes Veray Collection