1. George Benjamin Luks was an American artist, identified with the aggressively realistic Ashcan School of American painting.
31 Facts About George Luks
1. 2.
George Luks was born in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, to Central European immigrants.
3.
George Luks's father was a physician and apothecary and his mother was an amateur painter and musician.
4.
George Luks left performing when he decided to pursue a career as an artist.
5.
George Luks knew from a young age that he wanted to be an artist and studied briefly at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts before he traveled to Europe, where he attended several art schools and studied the Old Masters.
6.
George Luks became an admirer of Spanish and Dutch painting, especially the work of Diego Velazquez and Frans Hals.
7.
George Luks eventually abandoned Dusseldorf for the more stimulating spheres of London and Paris.
8.
In 1893, George Luks returned to Philadelphia, where he eventually found work as an illustrator for the Philadelphia Press.
9.
In George Luks, he had a ready listener but a man who was never going to be comfortable in the role of acolyte.
10.
In 1896, George Luks moved to New York City and began work as an artist for Joseph Pulitzer's New York World, where one of his assignments was to draw the popular Hogan's Alley comic strip series.
11.
George Luks' Feeding the Pigs and Mammy Groody were seen as examples of this new earthiness many art lovers were not ready to accept.
12.
George Luks painted working-class subjects and scenes of urban life, the hallmarks of Ashcan realism, with great gusto.
13.
In 1905, George Luks painted two of his most famous works, icons of the Ashcan school: The Spielers, now in the collection of the Addison Gallery of American Art, and The Wrestlers, now in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.
14.
George Luks portrays the ability of working-class children to experience pleasure despite their circumstances.
15.
George Luks was respected as a master of strong color effects.
16.
George Luks's style was not uniform throughout his career, though.
17.
George Luks enjoyed the adulation of his pupils and was a great raconteur.
18.
George Luks was not interested in preaching the tenets of modernism; his commitment was to realism and direct observation.
19.
George Luks's work was part of the painting event in the art competition at the 1932 Summer Olympics.
20.
George Luks was a born rebel and one of the most distinctive personalities in American art.
21.
George Luks took pride in being known as the "bad boy" of American art, liked to characterize himself as entirely self-created, and downplayed the influence of Robert Henri, or any contemporary, on his artistic development.
22.
George Luks was given to hyperbolic statements and was often intentionally vague about autobiographical details, preferring to maintain an aura of self-mythologizing mystery.
23.
George Luks was equally at home at a prize fight or in a tavern as in a museum or a gallery.
24.
George Luks was always a heavy drinker, and his friend and one-time roommate William Glackens often had to undress him and haul him to bed after a night of drunken debauchery.
25.
George Luks was a paradox: a man of enormous egotism and a great generosity of spirit.
26.
George Luks was found dead in a doorway by a policeman in the early morning hours of October 29,1933.
27.
George Luks's packed funeral was attended by family, former students, and past and present friends.
28.
George Luks was buried in an 18th-century embroidered waistcoat, one of his most valued possessions.
29.
George Luks is buried at Fernwood Cemetery in Royersford, Pennsylvania.
30.
George Luks's students included Norman Raeben, Elsie Driggs, and John Alan Maxwell.
31.
George Luks taught painting to Celeste Woss y Gil at the Arts Students League.