Luchita Hurtado exhibition, Serpentine Sackler Gallery

This is Luchita Hurtado's first solo show in a public gallery. At 98, she has waited a long time for public recognition and it is an all too familiar story of the artist mother, juggling family and career, overshadowed by the burgeoning career of an artistic spouse. But the Venezuela-born artist has been working tirelessly, leading a peripatetic existence (she moved to the United States aged 8), mingling with the biggest names of her era – Marc Chagall, André Breton and Frida Kahlo to name but a few.

Her paintings range from the abstract to the figurative, but she is perhaps best known for her self-portraits, painted from her perspective, looking down at her own body. They take in her stomach and breasts, and small snap shots of her surroundings – tabletops, fruit, the patterns of rugs. They are intimate things, placing the viewer in the artist's shoes, allowing us to experience the world as she sees it.

From the 1970s Hurtado's gaze turned upwards. The landscape of the body transformed into the landscape of the cosmos, often seen in these paintings from the bottom of some ravine or valley. The exhibitions concludes with images made in the last year. These works, accompanied by messages written in defence of nature, depict the human figure merging with trees, flowers and fruits – a reminder that we depend on the natural world, making this both a timely and overdue exhibition.