Immigrating to New Jersey from Greece in 1948 with his family, Lucas Samaras (b. 1936) attended Rutgers University (1955-59), where he was influenced by Allan Kaprow and George Segal, with whom he studied. From there, he went to Columbia University, studying with Meyer Shapiro (1959-62). He was trained as a painter but also studied acting and participated in numerous Happenings.

In the early 1960's, when Samaras had settled in New York, he became increasingly involved with a three-dimensional box format, often employing pins, razor blades, tacks, or other sharp objects, menacingly placed repellant to the touch. More recently, he has made extensive use of the photographs, frequently of himself and sometimes painted. Among the numerous public collections, his work is in the following institutions: The Art Institute of Chicago; Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Tate Gallery, London; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

Lucas Samaras has been the subject of seven retrospectives in the past thirty-two years; these included exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (1971); his first Whitney retrospective (1972-73); Samaras Pastels, a drawing survey organized by the Denver Art Musuem that traveled to six additional venues (1981-83); a retrospective of his Polaroid photographs from 1969-1983 that traveled to twelve museum venues in eleven European and American cities (1983-84); Lucas Samaras: Objects and Subjects 1969-1986 organized by the Denver Art Museum that traveled to five museums including the High Museum, Atlanta and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and Lucas Samaras - Self- 1991-1991 organized by the Yokohama Museum of Art, Japan.