• born in 1962 in Edmonton, Alberta, moved in 1986 to Berlin, Germany and to New York City, New York, ca. 1996
• parents emigrated from Hungary in 1956
• graduated from the Emily Carr College of Art and Design (1985), Vancouver, British Columbia

Following his move from Canada to Germany in 1986 and a studio residency at Kunstlerhaus in Berlin, Attila Richard Lukacs quickly established a reputation in both Europe and North America. His large-scale paintings have become known both for their monumentality and their subject matter, as Lukacs explores with unrelenting realism such taboo subjects as "homoeroticism" and skinhead life. Moving back to America and settling in New York after ten years of living in Berlin, Lukacs brought with him a fascination with Nazi and skinhead themes, not as a political supporter but a viewer of the young skinhead men as "objects of desire and symbols of political energy" (Georges Bogardi, 1994). His work has been compared to Rembrandt because of his use of chiaroscuro, to Goya because of his references to the grotesque, and his sometimes heroic positioning of the male figure recalls the neo-classicism of the Renaissance. True North (1989) is an example of this, as the young man sporting hightop boots, jeans and sweatshirt turns three quarters towards the viewer, gazing out like a David. Except in this image, there is no head of Goliath, only a small dog jumping up beside the man. Given his obsession with the male figure, nude or clothed, and perhaps because of his own openly homosexual lifestyle, the underlying sexuality of Lukacs's work has been much commented upon. Gerald Hannon has written about Lukacs's Everybody Wants the Same Thing (1993), in which a young man sits on a window ledge staring out at the viewer, as meaning "not, of course, that everybody wants to have sex with guys. It is, though, that everybody longs to be as naked, as shameless, about whatever it is he or she does want" (1997). The artist maintains he is working toward male nudity that does not necessarily connote sexuality, and his allusions to the male nude in art history are in part a reflection of his desire to break away from the art-historical notion of "homoeroticism" which limits the male nude to an erotic interpretation. In a 1992 interview with Robert Enright he admitted: "I've never really tried to play an important role in gay culture. As a matter of fact, I always used to steer people away from interpreting the painting as homoerotic because they were just normal to me. I expected people to see that. But in a funny way it is gotten important to me now." One can see a reference to the male nude in art history in a work such as Marzahn (1991), which uses gold leaf and oil paint to depict three young men in a lush and decorative garden, painting in new bushes around them as the viewer watches. This can be interpreted as a new kind of Eden, where three men huddle together, this time with no Eve, and this time given, in their ability to paint, the powers of creation that Adam and Eve lacked. Earl Miller commented that "Attila Richard Lukacs's paintings depict images of gay sexuality without the intention of constructing an arena for political discourse. But when [his] art is exposed to the public domain, where it is well within the reach of the conservative sector of the public, the work takes on a position of resistance. The apolitical nature of the work becomes accidentally subversive" (1991).

Die Schonen Sohne der Wuste
Moderne Kunst Dietmar Werle, Cologne, Germany

Budoir
Berlin, Germany

Bilder
Moderne Kunst Dietmar Werle, Cologne, Germany

Teck Gallery, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, British Columbia

Recent Works, 1990
Illingworth Kerr Gallery, Alberta College of Art, Calgary, Alberta

London Regional Art and Historical Museums, London, Ontario

Walter Phillips Gallery, Banff Canadian Centre for the Arts, Banff, Alberta

49th Parallel, New York, New York

Diane Farris Gallery, New York, New York

Adoration and Denial: Attila Richard Lukacs
Kunstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, Germany

Between Tradition and Desire
Plug-In Gallery, Winnipeg, Manitoba

Galerie Dietmar Werle, Cologne, Germany

Ark
Illingworth Kerr Gallery, Alberta College of Art, Calgary, Alberta

Chromapark
E-werk, Berlin, Germany

Informing Visions
Walter Phillips Gallery, Banff Centre for the Arts, Banff, Alberta

'64 - '94 Contemporary Decades
Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design, Vancouver, British Columbia

The Anxious Salon
MIT List Visual Art Centre

The New Renaissance
The Lowe Gallery, Atlanta, Georgia

Aids Project
NGBK, Berlin, Germany

The Big Picture
Diane Farris Gallery, Vancouver, British Columbia

Schwules Museum, Berlin, Germany

Sixty Years Sixty Artists
Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver, British Columbia

Interferenzin-Kunst aus West Berlin 1960-90
Riga, Latvia; St. Petersburg, Russia

Celebrations and Ceremonies
Security Pacific Gallery, Seattle, Washington

The Big Picture
Diane Farris Gallery, Vancouver, British Columbia

Seoul International Art Festival: Works on Mulberry Paper
National Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul, Korea

Myth and Magic in America: The Eighties
Museo de Contemporeno de Monterry, A.C., Monterry, Mexico

Vollbild, Tableaux du Sida
Kutturzentrum, Bern, Switzerland; La Fondation Deutsch, Belmont-sur-Lausanne, Switzerland

Urban Animals
The Surrey Art Gallery, Surrey, British Columbia

Morality Tales: History Painting in the 1980s
Grey Art Gallery, New York University, New York, New York

Toyama Now '87: New Art Around the Pacific
Museum of Modern Art, Toyama, Japan

London Life Young Contemporaries
London Regional Art Gallery, London, Ontario

West Coast Painting: New Directions
Canada House, London, England

Vancouver Painters
Paul Kuhn Fine Arts, Calgary, Alberta

4 Vancouver Young Romantic Painters
Centre culturel canadien, Paris, France

25 Young Canadian Artists
Convertible Showroom, Vancouver, British Columbia

Young Romantics
Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver, British Columbia

Contemporary Canadian Painting
Thomas Barry Fine Arts, Minneapolis, Minnesota

Futura Bold Installation
Convertible Showroom, Vancouver, British Columbia

Four Painters
Convertible Showroom, Vancouver, British Columbia

Baerwaldt, Wayne. Attila Richard Lukacs: Between Tradition and Desire. Winnipeg, Manitoba: Plug-In Gallery, 1988.

Bogardi, Georges. "Attila Richard Lukacs, Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal." Canadian Art 11, no. 2 (Summer 1994): 58-59.

Bourdon, David. Seoul International Art Festival: Works on Mulberry Paper. Seoul, Korea: The National Museum of Contemporary Art, 1991.

Cervantes, Miguel. Myth and Magic in America: The Eighties. Monterry, Mexico: Museo de Arte Contemporaneo, 1991.

Chua, Lawrence. "Attila Richard Lukacs." Flash Art (October 1989): 133.

Danzker, Jo-Ann Birnie. Toyama Now: New Art around the Pacific. Toyama, Japan: The Museum of Modern Art, 1987.

Day, Peter. "Morality Tales: History Painting in the 1980s." Canadian Art 4 (Fall 1987): 40, 42.

Dompierre, Louise. Attila Richard Lukacs. Toronto, Ontario: The Power Plant, 1989.

Douglas, Susan. "Slave and master: picturing the politics and poetics of s/m." Parachute 76 (October/November 1994): 29-33.

Enright, Robert. "The very rich painting of Attila Richard Lukacs." Border Crossings 11, no. 3 (July 1992): 14-25.

Gagnon, Paulette. Attila Richard Lukacs. Montréal, Québec: Musée des Beaux-Arts de Montréal, Québec, 1994.

Gordon, Jean. "The eye of the beholder." West (October 1990): n.p.

Grande, John. K. "Attila Richard Lukacs, Musée d'art contemporain." Artforum (April 1994): 103-104.

Gustafson, Paula. "Portraits of a Canadian painter." Reflex (July 1995): n.p.

Hanna, Deirdre. "Charles Rea/Atilla Richard Lukacs." C Magazine 12 (Winter 1986/87): 67-8.

---. "Lukacs' visceral vignettes." Now (29 June 1989): 47.

Hannon, Gerald. "At home with Attila." Canadian Art 14. no. 2 (Summer 1997): 46-53.

Heartney, Eleanor. "Report from Seoul: Korea opens the door. " Art in America (April 1991): 67-75.

Headlam, Bruce. "Attila up against the wall." Saturday Night (December/January 1993/1994): 54-59, 84-88.

Johnson, Ken. "Attila Richard Lukacs at 49th Parallel." Art in America (September 1989): 204.

Kangas, Matthew. "Richard Lukacs." Vanguard (12 September 1983): 41-42.

Kroker, Arthur. Attila Richard Lukacs: Painting the Hysterical Male. Vancouver, British Columbia: Diane Farris Gallery, 1990.

Larson, Kay. "Shrinking history." New York Magazine (5 October 1987): n.p.

"Letters: Controversial Deletion." Maclean's (5 November 1990): 6.

Lloyd, Ann Wilson. "Canada comes of age." Contemporanea (November 1989): 60-67.

Lukacs, Attila Richard. The Massachussetts Review (Spring/Summer 1990): 117-124.

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Miller, Earl. "Accidental subversives." C Magazine 29 (Spring 1991): 23-27.

---. "Attila Richard Lukacs." C Magazine 23 (Fall 1989): 68-69.

Osterwald, Tilman. Das Goldene Zeitalter. Stuttgart, Germany: Wurttenbergischer Kunstverein Stattgart, Edition Cantz, 1991.

Sage, Elspeth. "Attila Richard Lukacs." Vanguard 15 (September 1986): 36.

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Sokolowski, Thomas.  Attila Richard Lukacs. New York, New York: 49th Parallel, 1989.

---.  Attila Richard Lukacs. Vancouver, British Columbia: Diane Farris Gallery, 1990.

---. Morality Tales: History Painting in the 1980s. New York: Independent Curators Incorporated, 1987.

Thomas, Gilda. "Four Young Romantic Painters in Vancouver." Vie des arts 31, no. 25 (December 1986): 58.

Tousley, Nancy. "Fast forward." Canadian Art 17, no. 3 (Fall 1990): 34.

Wagner, Frank. Vollbild. West Berlin, West Germany: Neue Gesellschaft fur bildene Kunst, 1988.

Watson, Scott. Adoration and Denial: Attila Richard Lukacs. Berlin, Germany : Kunstlerhaus Bethanien, 1988.

---. "Attila Richard Lukacs." Canadian Art 5 (Fall 1988): 82.

---. "The generic city and its discontents: Vancouver accounts for itself." Arts Magazine (February 1991): n.p.

---. Young Romantics. Vancouver, British Columbia: Vancouver Art Gallery, 1985.

Whitington, Luther G. "ART/LA 90." Art & Auction (February 1991): n.p.

Young, Pamela. "Attila the painter." Maclean's (1 October 1990): 61-63.