Luis Sahagun

About

Luis Sahagun was born in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico, in 1982. His grandfather came to the United States in the 1940s under the Bracero Program, working in Chicago Height’s steel industry. Sahagun’s father found field work in the late 1970s, and Luis was brought to this country in 1985, living undocumented until he was naturalized in 1995 under Ronald Reagan’s Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986.

A 2001 graduate of Chicago Height's Bloom High School, Sahagun earned his BFA from Southern Illinois University in 2006 and his MFA in painting from Northern Illinois University in 2015. He has participated in multiple solo, juried, invitational, and national exhibits in the US and Mexico. In addition to being featured in New American Paintings (Issue #111), Luis's work has been showcased at the International Exposition of Contemporary Art (EXPO) Chicago, The Anderson Museum of Contemporary Art (Roswell, New Mexico), Chicago Cultural Center, and the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago. He is currently an artist guide at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, a lecturer at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and an art educator for the Smart Museum of Art.