Artist Lucien Smith, the downtown darling whose meteoric rise helped define New York’s early-2010s art scene, has died at 37.
Bill Powers, whose Half Gallery presented Smith’s first solo gallery exhibition, “Good Vibrations,” in 2012, remembered the artist as an important figure whose influence will endure.
“When people remember contemporary art from the early teens of this century, it will be impossible not to include the work of Lucien Smith in that conversation,” Powers told Page Six.
“I’ll think of him whenever it rains, and sunny days, too,” he said. “Our thoughts are with his mother and little brother now. Lucien had bought a house in Montauk where they all lived. His family was important to him.”
The cause of death has not been released.
Smith became known for his “Rain Paintings,” made by spraying paint from a fire extinguisher onto canvas.
After graduating from Cooper Union in 2011, he quickly became a fixture of the Lower Manhattan art world and was hailed as a “wunderkind” by The New York Times’ T Magazine in 2013. “He’s just 24, but Lucien Smith has arrived,” they wrote.
He was named to Forbes’ “30 Under 30” list in both 2013 and 2014.
In 2014, one of his painting sold at a Sotheby’s auction for $372,000. By the age of 25, he had garnered millions in sales.
In 2015, the New York Times reported that while Smith and other contemporaries were selling works “at auction for eye-watering multiples of the artists’ original gallery prices,” things had cooled. “This volatile sector of the market, where insiders continually scour Facebook and Instagram for the next Damien Hirst, has undergone a correction,” it reported.
According to his own web site, “Following what seemed like overnight success Smith battled with some of the pitfalls of gaining notoriety so early.”
Smith moved to Montauk telling Ssense, “I was subscribing to this idea of what a New York City artist was that was really pretentious and unhealthy. After the first four years of me showing, it became evident to me. I’m not interested in being a New York art star. I’m not interested in being a Dash Snow or a Dan Colen. It all kind of just came to a point where I couldn’t take it anymore.”
He then turned his eye towards helping other young artists. In 2015 created the nonprofit Serving the People, describing it as “a group which seeks to nourish emerging talent in art, music and film.”
“Our goal is to provide an alternative platform for creative inquiry and experimentation. We want to help bring awareness to the unrefined, uncommercial and create a market for it as well,” it said.
In 2025, he reopened Food, which was originally opened in 1971 by artists Tina Girouard, Carol Goodden, and Gordon Matta-Clark.
Smith seemed to be gearing up for a comeback in the art world, making four new Rain Paintings at Camp Hero in Montauk for a show at Tripoli Gallery titled “Delay of Game,” set to open this week, Sept. 12, and run all month.
“Life has taken me full circle,” Smith told Artnet. “I think it is time to return to the process I was given.”
Artist Andrew Kuo Tweeted on Tuesday, “Lucien Smith was our friend and his death is tragic. This is a loss for our community. Damn. Rest in peace, Lucien.”
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