Lucas Samaras (September 14, 1936 – March 7, 2024) was a Greek-born American photographer, sculptor, and painter.

Early life and education

Samaras was born in Kastoria, Greece on September 14, 1936. He studied at Rutgers University on a scholarship, where he met Allan Kaprow and George Segal.

Career

Samaras participated in Kaprow's "Happenings," and posed for Segal's plaster sculptures. Claes Oldenburg, in whose Happenings he also participated, later referred to Samaras as one of the "New Jersey school," which also included Kaprow, Segal, George Brecht, Robert Whitman, Robert Watts, Geoffrey Hendricks, and Roy Lichtenstein. Samaras previously worked in painting, sculpture, and performance art, before beginning work in photography. He subsequently constructed room environments that contained elements from his own personal history. His "Auto-Interviews" were a series of text works that were "self-investigatory" interviews. The primary subject of his photographic work is his own self-image, generally distorted and mutilated. He worked with multi-media collages, and by manipulating the wet dyes in Polaroid photographic film to create what he calls "Photo-Transformations". Of the diverse nature and output of his body of work New York Times arts journalist Grace Glueck said in 1996 that "There appears to be not one Lucas Samaras, but several artists of that name”. Samaras was represented by Pace Gallery from 1965. He represented Greece at the 53rd Venice Biennale in 2009 with the multi-installation "PARAXENA" in the Greek Pavilion in the Giardini. Samaras' sculpture Stiff Box 12 has been outside the University of Michigan Museum of Art since 1997. He was the subject of several portraits by Chuck Close, in media including painting, daguerreotype, and tapestry. Samaras died of complications from a fall in New York City on March 7, 2024, at the age of 87.

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