Initialed and dated lower right: “ARL ’90”. From the Skinheads Series.

Born in Alberta, Canada in 1962, Attila Richard Lukacs studied at the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design in Vancouver before moving to Berlin in 1986, where he lived and worked for a decade. In Berlin, Lukacs was exposed to skinhead culture and found their “uniform” of shaved heads and tattoos visually fascinating as a form of bodily rebellion. In his Skinheads series Lukacs chose not to paint his subjects engaged in the violent acts typically associated with their subculture, but rather as passive characters stuck between action and inaction. By reimagining his subjects in this way, Lukacs’ skinheads provided him with another avenue through which to explore the power dynamics of discipline, dominance and submission, and sadomasochism, themes prevalent through much of his body of work.