PAINTING
EARLY WORK 1964-1968
The artist’s early works reveal a formative period of experimentation and discovery, where materials, processes, techniques, and ideas were explored and refined, laying the foundation for the development of his distinctive artistic language.
HERALDIC BANNERS 1968
Estandartes (Banners) emerges from a technique of Luis Diaz's own invention -gauze, organdy and natural dyes fused with resin- producing textured, velvet-like surfaces. The central black-and-white piece expands outward with increasing color, ending in ethnic designs inspired by indigenous textiles, reflecting the artist's stylistic turn toward architecture.
EARTH INHABITANTS 1968
Inspired by the 1967 Montreal World's Fair, Earth Inhabitants (1968) forms a ring of puzzle-like cedar panels around a 3-meter Earth sphere with six holes projecting rotating red and yellow light beams into the darkness. The audience listened to ten minutes of urban noise ending in a plane crash; when the sphere stopped, the lights came on to applause.
SPECTATORS FOR 10 ABSTRACT VARIATIONS 1969
After the Vertebra Group's manifesto (Cabrera, Quiroa, Rojas), Luis Diaz felt directly addressed and responded with four paintings -Where We Come From, Where We Are, Who We Are, Where We Are Going- portraying art collectors, juries and critics. The final piece, with a plastic flower wreath screwed onto the canvas, was his first encounter with what is known today as an installation.
SANTIAGO ATITLAN 1971
This work consists of a group of two large-format canvases and six smaller works that accompany them as satellites. The surfaces feature ruptures caused by violence, functioning as windows through which the majestic and painful landscape of Lake Atitlán emerges, establishing a dialogue between wounds, memory, territory, and the environmental deterioration of the lake basin.
THE LAST SUPPER 1976
A symbolic work inspired by the image of the Last Supper. The environmental installation consists of 33 tables viewed from above, with scaled fruits made of laminated corrugated cardboard, in a chromatic progression that moves from the material’s natural color to full color at the center of the exhibition, and then fades away. Tables with fruit for tasting and pine leaves covering the floor engage the audience in a participatory experience of collective celebration.
ETERNAL HOLY BURIAL 1976
The environmental installation consists of 33 life-size human figures, viewed from above, carrying a processional float. Made of laminated corrugated cardboard, the pieces develop a chromatic progression that moves from the material’s natural color to black shadows and culminates in the traditional purple attire of the cucuruchos, before returning to the original cardboard tone. At the center, an altar with a cross and plastic flowers, together with a floor covered in flowers and pine, creates a sensory experience accompanied by sacred marches, incense, guaro, and chicharrones.
FAUNA GUATEMALENSIS 1985
Guatemalan Fauna symbolically groups the country's birds and beasts between builders and destroyers. On the gallery wall, Luis Diaz installed corrugated-cardboard green dots with cast shadows, acting as punctuation marks that turned the entire series into a visual sentence with its own reading rhythm.
THE CONQUEST 1989
The Conquest, inaugurated with words from architect Jorge Montes, depicts conquerors, religious figures and pirates in confrontation with the Kingdom of Guatemalam: coasts, beaches, and Tecun Uman's army of naked princesses, who ultimately dissolve, floating in a blue and white pacific horizon. Mirror-like plastic symbols -hands, eyes, chalices, crosses- hung from the ceiling, rotating to reflect the entire gallery.
IN FLAMES 1992
In Flames fractures four human figures -Homo Sapiens, Faber, Architectus, Naturabilis- into flames, alongside three triptychs: fractured geometries, burning architecture, and the Quetzal currency, Beans and Corn ablaze as a symbol of the people's hunger. Critic Elisa Fernandez Rivas described it as a synthetic abstractionism.
ART OF RESISTANCE 1997
Presented in Tokyo through the efforts of Ambassador Fernando Gonzalez Davidson, Art of Resistance brings together three installations: Facade, in memory of the 1980 burning of the Spanish Embassy; Death Sentence, with bullet-impact silhouettes marked on the floor; and five canvases -We Want Justice, Corn, Beans, Land- written as rural Guatemalans speak, alongside Fossil, a skeleton emerging from the mud of a mass grave.
MEMORIES OF SILENCE 2000
Stoned Painting, part of the Memories of Silence installation (2000), is a raw white canvas stamped with stones stained in fresh paint, an aesthetic document of people being attacked and stoned; the same stones were then placed on the floor as a mirror reflection of the artwork.
SON DE PAJAROS 2002
Installation composed of 14 oil-on-canvas works featuring geometric and abstract forms that depict a variety of vividly colored birds. Arranged along the gallery walls, the compositions evoke a collective movement, as if the birds were dancing to the rhythm of their own song, giving rise to the exhibition’s title. The upper band of each work, in shades of blue or green, suggests the sky and vegetation, placing the birds within their natural environment.
ISOMETRIC 2003
With Efraín Recinos as guest artist, Isométrica (2003) explores memory and popular culture. The exhibition includes three top-view settings of served tables: Vincent with Van Gogh’s Ear, Ramón with Che Guevara’s Fingers, and Holyfield-Bobbit with a Severed Limb, creating a journey through one hundred years of cannibalistic marketing. At the center, four sculptures of garments encapsulated in transparent resin —Tasso, Recinos, Danny, and Guicho—. Alongside, a triptych of oil-on-canvas works depicts bloodstained objects.
SPOKEN ART 2004
A posthumous tribute to Mario Monteforte Toledo and his roughly 120 Spoken Portraits, Spoken Art (2004) portrays dictators, psychopaths, politicians, critics, poets and quetzals resting against a solid-color horizon strip, exhibited at the Tea House of La Aurora Zoo.
NEO TROPIC 2007
Neotropic contrasts life and death across two large canvases: Neo Musa Guatemalensis Life, a nude, living woman with protagonist splendor, facing Neo Musa Guatemalensis Death, the same woman destroyed and burning. They are accompanied by quetzals, cattle, and tributes to masters Efrain Recinos and Roberto Gonzalez Goyri. Critic Juan B. Juarez described the work as portraying characters who watch with cynical indifference as the fires consume not the jungle, but the urban scenes they now inhabit.
