back
Limited Editions

Roberto Lugo

Roberto Lugo is an artist, ceramicist, social activist, poet, and educator. His work utilizes traditional European and Asian ceramic techniques reimagined with a twenty-first-century street sensibility, highlighting themes of poverty, inequality, and racial injustice. His hand-painted surfaces feature classic decorative patterns and motifs combined with elements of modern urban graffiti and portraits of individuals whose faces are historically absent on this type of luxury item, as well as Lugo’s family members and himself.Lugo was born in 1981 in the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia to working-class first-generation Puerto Rican parents. He holds a BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute and an MFA from Penn State. He has received numerous awards, including a 2023 Heinz Award, and his work is in the permanent collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the PhiladelphiaMuseum of Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The High Museum of Art, the Museum ofFine Arts,Boston, the Brooklyn Museum, the Walters Art Museum, and more. He lives and works in Philadelphia

 

 

 

“… My work reimagines this iconography, capturing the raw courage and despair in these journeys and setting it in a context to be truly seen… ”

THE PROJECT
Woven Forms 2 – What had happened was: On the way over