Lucas Samaras

Lucas Samaras was born in Kastoria, Macedonia, Greece in 1936. He came to the United States in 1948 and was raised in West New York, New Jersey. He became a naturalized American in 1955, the same year he entered Rutgers University, New Jersey. There he studied under Allan Kaprow, graduating in 1959.  From 1959 to 1962 he took classes in art history at Columbia University under Meyer Shapiro, majoring in Byzantine art. During those years he became actively involved in the emerging Pop Art scene and participated in “happenings” with Jim Dine, Claes Oldenburg, and Allan Kaprow at the Reuben Gallery.  After some early work in pastels and oils, he began a series of boxes. His autobiographical imagery first appeared in his environment at the Green Gallery in 1964, a recreation of his bedroom in New Jersey. Two years later he created his famous Mirror Room. Since his retrospective exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago in 1971 and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, in 1972, Samaras has been the subject of numerous exhibitions. Today he is recognized as one of the most distinctive and protean artists of his generation. His highly idiosyncratic art, which includes assemblages, figurative sculpture, manipulated autobiographical photographs, box construction, pastels, cut-paper drawings, prints, and books, eludes easy categorization and interpretation. Signature traits include a penchant for mirrors and reflections, a taste for soft and prickly textures, and intense, spectral colors, as well as materials such as beads, jewels, and foils.

*Excerpted from Tools as Art: the Hechinger Collection, published by Harry N. Abrams Inc.