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Lutes earned his MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1982. Integrating representation with the abstract, Lutes obscures his subjects through distortion. Such disfigurement, as seen in this drawing (exhibited in Documenta IX), recalls the grotesque depictions of flesh found in the work of Ivan Albright.
Lutes also played the drums since high school, and recorded and performed as a percussionist in the instrumental jazz-noise band Tiny Hairs. On the confluence of art and music, the artist has said, “Music is below the surface of my work. I ‘studied’ with Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, Lester Young, and Louis Armstrong. I formed myself as a painter when I figured out how to use them in my paintings.”