Brooklyn '57
Wild for Gestural Abstract Expressionism, but already showing signs of Biomorphic Symbology, Catusco painted with gusto.
"He had seen, studied and exhibited with the originators of abstract expressionism, the first home grown American art form"
-Jim Parsons and Philip Bareiss
"Experimentation: this is my world. To create without the regimentation of style or the stigma of boredom."
-Louis Catusco
Brooklyn '60
With signs of frustration not being able to find a slot in the already crowded NY Gallery world, Catusco contemplated his path forward. In just a few months, Catusco would leave Brooklyn and move to Taos.
"Taos received him as a far out hermit-prophet of the last word in avant-garde..."
-Jim Parsons and Philip Bareiss
"I do not, and will not, sit down and grind out or mass produce paintings. Art should not be labor but a conquest"
- Louis Catusco
Taos '64
Constructing his home and beginning to feel rooted
"Settling in Taos... in 1963, Catusco has won nearly every award his town and state have to offer."
-Tricia Hurst, Southwest Art
"An important piece of art should pose questions and suggest visual and aesthetic problems. It should provoke the onlooker into questioning things."
-Louis Catusco
Taos '68
Peaks of powerful expression and symbols are coming to Catausco from his First Nation artist friends.
"More importantly, I see holy images that remind us of the not quite touchable world of mystery."
-Gary Cook, Stables Gallery, Taos
"I work with the inanimate visions that dwell in the hidden recesses of the soul's eye." -Louis Catusco
Taos '72
Having found a core style, Catusco expresses his synthesis in larger canvases.
"If Louis Catusco's goal was to create a language of revelation, of life trying to reveal itself, then he succeeded. I believe he understood at the deepest level that the modern art movement was a spiritual movement..."
-Gary Cook, Stables Gallery, Taos
"Most often I start from the absolute beginning ..which is nothing. I then work until I reach the absolute end ..which is something."
-Louis Catusco
Taos '80-98
Year after year, Catusco became more withdrawn from the local Art World. Eventually he began to withdraw from others all together. He continued contact with his indigenous friends. He spent time with his dogs in the rugged countryside... and at home studying the I Ching... and completing his intricate artistic journey.
"Living, as he does down an almost inaccessible dirt road in a high-fenced two room adobe with only classical and contemporary music and his dogs to dispel the acute aloneness."
-Tricia Hurst, Southwest Art
"Only individuals can, and will, survive from this vast technological society that is now engulfing us. Art is the stabilizer wherein man can ensure himself of a vanishing reality."
-Louis Catusco
