Lucas Samaras, a pioneering figure in digital art known for his innovative approach to portraiture, has died at the age of 87. The death was announced by the Pace Gallery, which has replaced him since 1965, with a relationship of more than five decades and about 30 solo exhibitions. .
Throughout his life, Samaras constantly reinvented his practice, working in a variety of media, 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 at the school, he connected with key figures in the New York art scene, including longtime collaborator Robert Whitman.
In New York, Samaras’ early involvement in the Happenings movement brought him into contact with artists such as Claes Oldenburg and Jim Dine. At the 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, he held his first major exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In 1970, Samaras presented his first international solo exhibition at the Kunstverein Museum in Hannover, Germany.
In the late 1960s, Samaras began working with a Polaroid 360 camera, marking the beginning of his permanent photographic 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 art patron Agnes Gund.
Recently, he expanded his artistic endeavors to Web3, creating a collection of NFTs based on the digital artworks he developed in the mid-2000s. Among them are the works from his 2003 “Photofictions” series, composed of fragmented self-portraits and abstractions.
Samaras’ 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 exhibition to be held at Dia Beacon in September 2024 will present sculptures from his “Cubes and Trapezoids” series, celebrating the artist’s journey of continuous evolution.
