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Luis Lugán, Madrid, 1929-2021.
Luis García Núñez, is a plastic artist of difficult classification, we cannot look for another painter-sculptor with similar connotations in the artistic panorama.
In the late fifties and early sixties his painting has a clearly geometric and constructivist character, in the works of this period, many of them made on cardboard, he still signed with the name of García Núñez, later changing his name to Lugan.
Thanks to the knowledge of electronics acquired over many years in the performance of his work in Telefonica, he can from 1967 to begin to apply what he had learned, but under a plastic vision and approach, developing his first audiovisual and tactile works.
Lugan develops works in which he involves several senses at the same time: hearing and sight, sight and touch, and sometimes even smell.
His sound taps or his hands that give off heat on contact are well known.
In 1968 he became part of a group of artists who approached the computer for the first time as a means to develop their works, this experience was developed in the Centro de Cálculo de la Universidad Complutense de Madrid in the Seminars of Automatic Generation of Plastic Forms. This group was formed by José Luis Alexanco, Elena Asins, Tomás García Asensio, José Luis Gómez Perales, Eusebio Sempere, Abel Martín, José Mª Yturralde... What made Lugan's work different from the rest of the components was that he was not interested in the software, but his attention was on the different electronic parts of the machine, that is to say the hardware.
In 1972 and on the occasion of the Encuentros de Pamplona, Lugan developed his well-known work Random Telephones, which were telephones that communicated randomly between different places in the city in a totally free way without going through a "controlled" switchboard. That same year he participated in the Venice Biennial and a year later in the Sao Paulo Biennial.
He has participated in all the exhibitions dedicated to the Centro de Cálculo, such as the itinerant exhibition "El Centro de Cálculo, 30 años después" in 2003, which toured the halls of the Centro de Exposiciones Municipal de Elche, the Museo de la Universidad Alicante and the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Ibiza. Two years later in the Andalusian Center of Contemporary Art in Seville participates in the exhibition "Models, Structures, Forms". And more recently in the exhibition dedicated by the MNCARS to the Encuentros de Pamplona and in "From Numerical Calculus to Open Creativity. El centro de cálculo de la universidad de Madrid (1968-1982)" Exhibition Hall of the Centro de Arte Complutense. Madrid (2012) and Museum of the University of Alicante and Polytechnic University of Valencia (2013).
Work at the collection: - Mano Térmica
- Sin título B/N, Sin título Color (serigrafía)
- Sin título 1970, LS-AP4 1970
Mano Térmica de Artista, 1973
He was the first Spanish artist who thought of real interaction with the viewer. He wanted those who admired his work to be able to touch and feel it, something forbidden until then in any exhibition. In the midst of Franco's dictatorship, specifically in 1973, the Madrid-born artist delved into robotic techniques to create his Thermal Hand, the starting point for the exhibition Faces.
Sin título B/N, Sin título Color (serigrafía), 1973
Sin título 1970, LS-AP4 1970
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