Lucien Smith cause of death was not disclosed after the artist died at 37, according to a report that named Bill Powers as the person who relayed the news. Powers said, “Lucien lives in a wordless place inside us now.”
Smith’s death closes the book on a career that moved through painting, sculpture, NFTs, film and restaurants, while leaving the central question of what happened unanswered in the public record. He had been a visible downtown art-world presence for about 15 years.
Bill Powers and Lucien Smith
Powers hosted Smith’s first solo gallery show, “Good Vibrations,” at Half Gallery in 2012. He later described that show to Office in 2018 as, “It was all appropriated guitar bodies which Lucien had then turned into wall sculpture by either painting or adorning them with bottle caps, glitter, tin foil, etc.”
He added, “Think John Armleder meets junkyard Duchamp.” Those early works included the “Rain Paintings,” some of which later sold on the secondary auction market for as much as $389,000.
Cooper Union and Montauk
Smith studied at Cooper Union, and Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn bought a painting from his senior-thesis show in 2011. By 2014, he had bought a house in Montauk and was spending most of his time there.
His profile expanded quickly after that first wave of attention. In 2013, Alberto Mugrabi said, “I will be watching Lucien Smith because he brings me sunshine in the rain.”
Lucien Smith Cause Of Death
Smith had said in T Magazine in 2015, “This is the time in my life when I’m maturing.” A year earlier, he told the Observer, “I really want to stay out of the art world right now.”
That shift never erased his earlier rise, but it does leave the reporting on his death incomplete in one important respect: the cause was not given. For readers who followed him from Cooper Union to Half Gallery and beyond, the immediate fact is that he is gone at 37, while the reason remains unrevealed.
