George Benjamin Luks
American, 1867 - 1933
(not assigned)New York, New York
SchoolAshcan School; The Eight
Biographyhttp://www.groveart.com/shared/views/article.html?from=search&session_search_id=44365027&hitnum=1§ion=art.052401From Grove Art Online: (b Williamsport, PA, 13 Aug 1867; d New York, 29 Oct 1933).
American painter and draughtsman. He lived as a child in the mining town of Shenandoah, PA, but moved to Philadelphia in 1883. The facts of his early career were later confused by the wild stories fabricated by him. After a short stint in vaudeville, he spent a year at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia. From 1885 he was in Europe, living most of the next decade in Düsseldorf, Munich, Paris and London, intermittently attending German and French art academies. In 1894 Luks became an artist-reporter for the Philadelphia Press, where he befriended Robert Henri, John Sloan, William J. Glackens and Everett Shinn. In late 1895 he went to Cuba as a war correspondent; the following year he moved to New York and joined the staff of the New York World as a cartoonist.
In 1897 Luks began to paint. Working with dark, slashing strokes, akin to the style of Henri, he sympathetically portrayed New York's social outcasts, as in the Spielers (1905; Andover, MA, Phillips Acad., Addison Gal.). This subject-matter and Luks's treatment of it led critics to characterize him later as part of the Ashcan school. Luks exhibited at the National Arts Club in 1904 and four years later, as a member of the Eight , participated in their exhibition at the Macbeth Galleries, New York. In 1913 he exhibited at the Armory Show. Luks taught at the Art Students League from 1920 to 1924 and then established his own school. His paintings from the late years lack the strength of his early works. Luks died at the age of 66 after being beaten in a bar-room brawl.
Person TypeIndividual
Terms
- male
- Caucasian-American
