Lucas Samaras, celebrated for his unclassifiable art practice, dies at 87.
Portrait of Lucas Samaras in Greece, 1983. Photo by Alexander Tsiaras. Courtesy of Pace Gallery.
Lucas Samaras, a pioneering figure in digital art known for his innovative approach to portraiture, has passed away at 87. His death was announced by Pace Gallery, which has represented him since 1965, marking a relationship spanning over five decades and around 30 solo exhibitions.
Throughout his life, Samaras constantly reimagined his practice, working across various mediums, including photography, installation, sculpture, and digital technology. Born in Greece in 1936, he immigrated to the United States in 1948 and studied art at Rutgers University and Columbia University. While in school, he connected with key figures in the New York art scene, including longtime collaborator Robert Whitman.
In New York, Samaras’s early involvement in the Happenings movement connected him with artists such as Claes Oldenburg and Jim Dine. At that time, he was gaining recognition for the first iterations of his “Mirrored Room” installations. By 1966, he presented his first solo exhibition with Pace, and in 1969, had his first major exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. By 1970, Samaras presented his first international solo show at the Kunstverein Museum in Hannover, Germany.
Installation view of “Lucas Samaras: Selected Works 1960–1966” at Pace Gallery, 1966. Courtesy of Pace Gallery.
By the late 1960s, Samaras started working with a Polaroid 360 camera, marking the beginning of his enduring photography practice. His “Poses” series (1983–2010), features colorful portraits of his friends and collaborators, such as Pace founder Arne Glimcher, artists Cindy Sherman, David Byrne, and Alex Katz, and arts patron Agnes Gund.
More recently, he expanded his artistic endeavors into Web3, creating a collection of NFTs based on digital artworks he developed in the mid-2000s. These include works from his 2003 “Photofictions” series, comprised of fragmented self-portraits and abstractions.
Samaras’s work is held in several major museum collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, and the Art Institute of Chicago. An upcoming exhibition at Dia Beacon in September 2024 will feature sculptures from his “Cubes and Trapezoids” series, celebrating the artist’s ever-evolving career.