The painter Luchita Hurtado designed her own clothes for most her life

Everything in Luchita Hurtado’s life belonged to a daily practice.

Her artwork was, of course, a major part of that routine. But her need to express herself often took forms beyond the canvas. She kept shelves full of journals which documented her day-to-day life and tracked all her dreams — never excluding the most mundane moments, from what she ate for lunch to taking her car to the mechanic. Her living spaces were delicately curated, with indigenous artifacts, rocks and leaves she would pick up on her walks and vintage wind-up toys. And no matter the occasion, Hurtado led this intentional lifestyle wearing a wardrobe she crafted entirely for herself.

The Venezuelan-born painter lived in a utilitarian uniform of sorts. She designed all kinds of pieces, from striped vests and floor-length dresses to lightweight pants and winter coats. But almost every silhouette was inspired after a specific design she used for almost all her shirts: a boxy shape with four front pockets and partial buttons, similar to a smock. Seemingly inspired by Japanese workwear, Hurtado wore these oversize, functional looks for around 80 years.

Inside a Gardena warehouse, where her and her husband Lee Mullican’s estates are housed, racks hang from the high ceilings. It’s the first time her personal wardrobe is being shared with the public in this capacity. Surrounded by packaged canvases, drawers of sketches and displayed family photos, Hurtado’s clothes are color-coded, labeled and tagged with identifiers. There are dozens of her favored shirt form, each made from the same sewing pattern in colors ranging anywhere from beige to a deep magenta. Other racks hold the matching skirts and pants as well as stylized denim shawls and double-breasted, patchwork coats she made for special occasions.

In 2018, Hurtado was featured as a part of the Hammer Museum’s “Made in L.A.” series. The pictured clothing item is a version of her signature shirt, which she designed specifically for the exhibit. It was sold in the gift shop at the time.

Hurtado’s “uniform,” though, wasn’t without modifications. Once she figured out her signature boxy silhouette, she experimented from there. Some were made from colorful tweed, iridescent fabric or patterned upholstery material. The shirts, though of the same shape, varied between full button-ups and a more pop-over style with a few buttons. Some tops had no buttons at all. She would sometimes use erratic stitching to pattern her clothes or reversible patterns to give a rolled sleeve a bigger pop.

“She was somebody that didn’t want to settle for what was around her and made her own path for everything,” says Cole Root, the director of Hurtado and Mullican’s estates. He worked with Hurtado, as a registrar, from 2017 until 2020, when she died. Now, he helps carry on the two artists’ legacies.

Though Hurtado created art throughout her almost 100-year life, she didn’t start to gain mainstream recognition until her 90s. In her last years, she was able to see her paintings fill places like LACMA, the Hammer Museum and London’s Serpentine Gallery.

Over the summer, Hauser & Wirth’s downtown L.A. gallery opened “Yo Soy” (on view through Oct. 5), a more expansive look into Hurtado’s first solo exhibition at the Woman’s Building in 1974. The show is centered around her “Linear Language” series, where Hurtado abstracted various words into geometric shapes and patterns to create a new kind of portrait. Some of the paintings are brightly colored and spell out many hidden words like “mouth,” “alone” or “child.”

Luchita Hurtado, “Face for Arcimboldo,” 1973, Oil on canvas, 189.9 x 189.9 cm

(Jeff McLane / Courtesy The Estate of Luchita Hurtado and Hauser & Wirth)

She writes in the original artist statement: “I had a good response to the show but no one saw the letters, the messages. Just the color and energy. It didn’t seem important that they were not fully seen and I thought it superfluous to explain.”

While leading a tour of the show, Root even joked about how it’s taken him years to spot some of the camouflaged words.

From her repetitious linework to her paintings of blue skies with surrealist feathers and self-portraits of her fragmented nude body, Hurtado’s art is marked by her sense of experimentation and constant changes in style. At the heart of all her work lies her deep interest in what it means to be human and exist in nature.

But before settling into art, Hurtado got her start with clothes — roots that she at first rejected yet returned to throughout her life.

She was born in Maiquetía, Venezuela, where her mother was a seamstress and her father a representative for Singer sewing machines. It was initially her grandmother who taught Hurtado to sew, as it was a skill most Venezuelan girls acquired during childhood. Hurtado’s early moments of solitude and daydreaming were often interrupted by her grandma, who would tell her that “idle hands tempt the devil” and then guide Hurtado through undoing and restitching the hem on her favorite dress. Hurtado then immigrated to New York City in 1928, when she was 8.

For high school, the aspiring artist attended Washington Irving, one of the first women’s vocational schools in the city. Her family was under the impression she was studying dressmaking and following in the steps of her family. It wasn’t until after graduation that they discovered she had been studying art the whole time.

“Her family was trying to establish themselves in this country, so they stuck with the support systems they had,” says Root. “But Luchita was really branching out from that.”

She returned to the sewing machine while pregnant with her first son. She wasn’t a fan of any of the contemporary maternity clothes, writing that stores only offered “‘butcher boy’ dresses with an ugly hole cut out in the skirt.” So she decided to make exactly what she wanted: long flowy skirts and comfortable but operational tops.

“It’s really the way Lucita lived her life. She wasn’t going to do the thing that her family was doing. She always kind of chose her path,” says Root. “So, she returned to making clothing when what she wanted wasn’t available. She manifested her own reality and perfected this uniform.”

The striped denim suit, pictured on the right, is one of the last suits she made. It was made from fabric she had found in L.A., sometime in the 80s or 90s. As someone who “ended up with a passion for denim,” she notes that “it’s by far the nicest.”

Her collection was meant to last her through different phases of her life. All of the skirts had elastic waists, were cut on the bias (a nonnegotiable for Hurtado) and had a little contrast stitch on the trim. Motherhood marked much of her adult life, as three of her four children were born 11 years apart.

Root shares, “She found great joy in it. It was something she could do to make her happy. She could envision making things for her children, even when she couldn’t afford it or if it didn’t exist.”

As a mother in her 20s, going through a divorce from her first husband, Hurtado had to come up with new ways to support her family. She turned to her familial roots in fashion and combined them with her artistic practices. She worked on window displays and murals for department store Lord & Taylor and did fashion illustrations for Condé Nast.

Root points out a heavy winter coat among one of the racks. The bright red material with thick black stripes was originally a Pendleton horse blanket in a Lord & Taylor’s Christmas window display. Hurtado’s employers at the time allowed her to keep it. She then turned it into a jacket which she wore her whole life, especially in New York winters.

In an indirect way, her closet was a factor in her decision to settle down in Los Angeles. It was 1951 and she had recently coupled up with Lee Mullican, a member of the post-surrealist group Dynaton. He was headed to Oklahoma, tending to some exhibitions, and she was pregnant, unsure of where to go.

“Her sister had told her not to come home to Venezuela because their mom wouldn’t want her there pregnant, with no husband. She thought about going to New York, but it was winter and she didn’t have any warm clothes. So she found a support system in L.A.,” says Root. The story continues that she found a fully furnished apartment for her family immediately after giving birth and while still in the hospital bed. She and Mullican eventually got married and settled into a home in the Santa Monica Canyon where they split the remainder of their lives between Los Angeles and Taos, New Mexico.

Almost every article in Hurtado’s archive has a unique story. Before her passing in 2020, members of her team sat with her, went through her entire closet and took note of each anecdote she shared. Today, these records exist digitally in an organized spreadsheet, with columns detailing when each item was made, the materials used and Hurtado’s associated memories.

Some of the remarks include notes like, “used to wear with big platform shoes,” “good for travel because it doesn’t crease,” “very art nouveau” and “I ended up with a passion for denim.” Others are more in-depth, telling stories about the time she dressed as a geisha: “They put on ropes that bind you in to put on the back part of the clothing. My ribs were black and blue. It really hurt.” Or she recounts the story of wearing her white cotton jacket with these “Indian shoes … that point and turn up at the end, very unusual combination. I met a couple who were intrigued by my outfit and wanted to know where the shoes were from. It turned out to be Dalí and his wife!” She knew exactly where she wore most of these logged outfits, like when she would attend Condé Nast parties or one of Frank Gehry’s functions.

Among the racks, there are some pieces left unfinished, threads hanging and pins pushed in. Every single article of clothing, whether it was worn hundreds of times or never completed, still carries the feeling of being lived in. Behind a partition in the warehouse, bins full of fabric cram the storage space. Hurtado always had plans to continue creating more pieces. Her daily practice truly never stopped.