Somos Historia

Somos Historia, painted by Luis Abreux, is the second of three murals brought to the museum’s 5th Street wall in 2021. Painted as a historical portrait, the satirical style reinforces the theatrics of life and how the most valuable things are relative- like the lives exchanged for gold 500 years ago

Five hundred years ago the wind changed everything. The fire of ambition devoured Quetzalcoatl and his children mercilessly. The cold metal blinded the innocent blood. Taking lives in exchange for gold was the only feasible plan. But they discovered that Quetzals do not live in cages and cannot die because they are dreams that fly. Now our history lives in the color of our skin, the shape of our bodies, our language. Our culture resists time. Our culture is the resistance of eurocentric values.– Luis Abreux

About the Artist

Luis Abreux was born in 1971. He earned his Master’s degree in Fine Art, specializing in Painting 1995 from the San Alejandro Art Academy in Havana, Cuba and attended the Taller de Técnicas Subliminales en el Arte y la Publicidad. Abreux has resided in Austin, TX since 2005.

With a deliberate creative process, Luis Abreux aims to evoke emotion with his work. Abreux believes that visuals influence and allow the viewer to travel and find new creative dialogue that ultimately lead to creating new solutions. The human, the immigrant, the memory, the interactions of constant escape and the experiences of interminable travel leading the way, the canvas or the paper. His work absorbs and melts the before and now, the fantasy and the reality pictured in a surrealist diary that births real experiences and the absurdities of an experiment. Drawings, collages, mixed techniques, and all other mediums are used to support Abruex’ diverse formats. For Abreux, the idea is the most important.