ROBERTO LUGO (1981 - )
Burning Spear.

Glazed ceramic in 2 pieces, 2023. Approximately 279x89x120 mm; 11x3½x4¾ inches. Signed in ink, verso edge.

Provenance: collection of the artist.

The subject of Roberto Lugo's ceramic work is Burning Spear, the Jamaican reggae musician and one of the most influential and long-standing artists to emerge from the 1970s reggae movement.

Roberto Lugo creates defiant work that confronts the function and subject matter of high art objects from classical antiquity. Using ceramics, Lugo calls attention to intergenerational experiences of racial injustice while celebrating African American and Latino culture.

Ceramics as an artistic medium is important to Lugo because of its anthropological context. Over the course of history, finely crafted ceramic objects stood as a symbol of class, privilege, and the aristocracy. Lugo intervenes in these histories, and countless more, to create a new mode of storytelling that blends narrative and portraiture with cross-disciplinary techniques and time-honored forms to introduce those notably absent from the art historical canon.

Roberto Lugo holds a BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute and an MFA from Penn State. His work has been featured in exhibitions at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, and the Museum of Arts and Design, New York. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including a 2019 Pew Fellowship, a Cynthia Hazen Polsky and Leon Polsky Rome Prize, a US Artist Award, and the 2023 Heinz Awards for the Arts.

His work has been acquired by institutions including the Brooklyn Museum, High Museum of Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Museum of African American History and Culture, Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Walters Art Museum. Lugo is currently an Assistant Professor at the Tyler School of Art and Architecture in Philadelphia. Bio courtesy of the artist's gallery website.

Consigned to support the Rush Philanthropic Arts Foundation.