Sven Lukin

Born 1934, Riga, Latvia. Died 2022, New York.

 
 

About

Sven Lukin immigrated to the United States in 1949 to begin his education in architecture at the University of Pennsylvania. After a meaningful encounter with one of the university’s lecturers, Louis Kahn, Lukin moved to New York City to pursue a career in painting, taking cues from Kahn’s austere and monumental aesthetic. Throughout his career as a painter, printmaker and sculptor, Lukin remained devoted to the use of flat areas of color and simplified figures. In his prints, Lukin juxtaposed muted backgrounds and luminous foregrounds to create a playful tension between flatness and volume.