Federico Luger
Born in Milan in 1979, is an Italian-Caribbean artist, who grew up in Caracas, Venezuela, where he lived until the age of 21.
Naturalized Italian, he lives and works between Milan and Maloja.
At the age of 14, he comes to Italy for the first time, a trip that would indelibly mark and change the young Luger’s life and vision of art. His training begins with his mentor Adriana Cifuentes, who motivates him to enroll at the Armando Reveron Academy in Caracas, where he studies drawing and painting, while also taking interest in photography and graphic design.
On 11th April 2002, the Venezuelan Republic was overwhelmed by the greatest social crisis in its history. The young Luger, a student and a demonstrator at the time, is attacked by Chávez’s forces, staining with blood Venezuela’s history on that day. Luger found himself caught up in the historical and political events of his native country, and realizes that neither the government nor the opposition were able to guarantee democracy and the well-being of the state. Luger decides to sell his car and begins a pilgrimage to Europe, most certain he will never go back: “If I had stayed in Venezuela, the pain would have been so great that I might have murdered someone; at that moment I think millions of Venezuelans lost their heads and then their hope. No one ever imagined that the situation would get even worse. The oil company PDVSA is dead”1.
After travelling and pilgrimaging in several European cities, he settles in Milan, where he continues his studies at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts. His sensitivity and passion for art, together with his continuous intellectual research and his need for interaction and cultural exchange, lead him to open a space in Milan in 2005 dedicated to contemporary art: Federico Luger (FL GALLERY), which brings together a group of international artists, both young and established, sharing the need for continuous research and reflection in a mutual cultural exchange, and with whom he forges strong ties of intellectual friendship. Luger’s interest in art is not only directed at the work itself, but also at the context in which the work lives and is enjoyed, at the thoughts that generates it and at the study that creates it. His artistic practice takes shape from the intuitive and experimental analysis in continuous development through different media, first of all painting, to which he adds the creation and curatorship of projects and exhibitions such as “The immigrants”, Venice, 2013 and Advertising the Paradise, A Pick Gallery, Turin, 2020. For Federico Luger, Art is an inescapable concept and therefore generates an all-encompassing interest in his life as an artist, gallery owner, curator, organizer, intellectual person and, perhaps, above all, idealist.
1. Words by Federico Luger, 3rd May 2021
