Dreams in Dust: The Pastels of Lucas Samaras

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Vibrant and expressive, the dreamlike pastel drawings of Lucas Samaras reveal the singular artist’s important history with the medium and its role in his creative development. Duri ng the first three decades of his long career, American artist Lucas Samaras (1936–2024) turned to pastel to produce small, intimate works that explored themes present in his better-known paintings, sculptures, and installations. He was attracted to pastel’s bright colors and shimmering surface and the fact that it was an unfashionable medium in postwar American art. Dreams in Dust: The Pastels of Lucas Samaras celebrates a gift of forty-eight works to the Morgan Library & Museum from the artist and his dealer Arne Glimcher. Dating to the years 1958–83, the drawings featured in this fully illustrated catalogue range from surreal seascapes and interiors to self-portraits, nudes, and still life. Essays by Isabelle Dervaux, Margaret Holben Ellis, and Lindsey Tyne examine the significance of these drawings within Samaras’s oeuvre and how the precarity of pastel brings forth an intensity similar to his works in other mediums. Published by the Morgan Library & Museum Related exhibition Show more