Lucien Smith


Lucien Smith is an American artist and filmmaker based in New York. Forbes featured Smith twice in its 2013 and 2014 list of 30 under 30 in the category "Art & Style". The New York Times named him the "art world Wunderkind".

Education

Smith graduated with a BFA from the Cooper Union School of Art in 2011.

Art market

Artsy estimated in 2014 that Smith generated a total of $3.7 million at auction that year.
Smith is associated with other young painters such Oscar Murillo and Jacob Kassay whose work has appreciated rapidly and are favored by collectors for investment-ready fare. A work from Smith's 2011 Cooper Union graduate show was resold in November 2013 for $389,000. In February 2014, his work Two Sides of the Same Coin sold for £224,500 at a Sotheby's auction in London.

Serving the People

In 2017, Smith launched the creative initiative STP. Their aim is to facilitate innovative conversation through the intersection of art and culture.

Artworks

Rain Paintings

In 2011, Smith executed a suite of abstractions he calls Rain Paintings, which he creates by spraying fire extinguishers filled with paint. In 2014 an example of these works titled Two Sides of the Same Coin sold at Sotheby’s Contemporary Art Evening Auction London's first lot for $372,000 against an estimate of $66,000–99,000.

Tigris Paintings

In 2014, Smith produced Tigris, a show of 11 camouflage-patterned abstract paintings, inspired by the recollection of the first work of art that strongly impacted him—Hokusai’s The Great Wave off Kanagawa. The exhibit was described as "undistinguished" and "a shrewd career move".

Exhibitions

Solo exhibitions