Luis Cruz Azaceta (born 1942), a Cuban-American painter who fled Havana alone at 18 in 1960 amid revolutionary upheaval, transforms personal exile and witnessed atrocities into visceral, large-scale canvases that fuse neo-expressionist distortion with graphic boldness, centering anguished self-portraits amid symbols of urban decay, pandemics, terrorism, and forced migrations. His evolving series—from 1970s subway horrors to 1980s AIDS elegies, post-Katrina installations, and recent critiques of gun violence and border walls—probe the fragility of identity and society, earning Guggenheim and Joan Mitchell grants while exhibiting at MoMA, Whitney, and Smithsonian; now based in New Orleans since 1992, he remains prolific into the mid-2020s with shows like 2024's "Loose Screws" at George Adams Gallery and 2025's "Age of Anxiety" at Arthur Roger, wielding art as a raw confrontation with chaos and injustice.