Attila Richard Lukács gained international attention via his E-werk series that
he created in the 1980s and ’90s while living in Berlin, where he was part of the subculture Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice (SHARP). The E-werk series was a collection of large figurative paintings of male nude and semi-nude skinheads, depicted in heroic, classical, and erotic poses in chiaroscuro, reminiscent of Renaissance art. Lukács’s diverse body of work is representative of this itinerant spirit. His often blatantly homoerotic paintings marry classical configurations
of the male body with contemporary renditions of deviant masculinity, depicting everything from military cadets to skinheads. Using pornographic magazines and his love of nature as reference points, Lukacs’s irreverent and thought- provoking canvases have been widely exhibited across Canada and abroad, drawing attention to their interrogation of the violent beauty of the male form captured through the gaze of a gay man.
