Michael Luchs

Michael Luchs (b. 1938, Portsmouth, OH, USA; d. 2021, Holly, MI) was among the celebrated Detroit Cass Corridor painters and sculptors in the 1960s and 1970s. Luchs graduated from Olivet College (Olivet, Michigan) in 1961, and attended the University of Michigan in 1964 before moving to Detroit, where he studied at Wayne State University (1966-68). Luchs’ work was featured in the Detroit Institute of Arts exhibition, Kick Out the Jams: Detroit’s Cass Corridor, 1963-1977, which took place in 1980, and also traveled to Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art, and written up in Art in America as part of a major spread on the Detroit’s art scene.

Michael Luchs has worked in rural settings for the last several years, and currently lives in Lewiston, Michigan, with his wife artist Kathryn Brackett Luchs. His work is part of several collections including the Detroit Institute of Arts, Wayne State University James Duffy Collection, University of Michigan Museum of Art (UMMA), and the Cranbrook Academy of Art Museum, as well as several private collections throughout the United States. In the Spring of 2017, Michael Luchs’ work was featured in a solo exhibition at Simone DeSousa Gallery, Detroit, titled “Cass Corridor: Connecting Times.” At the same time, he was part of the 2017 Invitational Exhibition of Visual Arts at the American Academy of Arts and Letters, in New York, where he was the recipient of the Academy’s 2017 Art and Purchase Award. In the Spring of 2018, Michael Luchs’ work was presented in a solo exhibition titled Fictitious Character at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD). In 2019, his work was part of the exhibition Landlord Colors: On Art, Economy, and Materiality, at the Cranbrook Art Museum. Luchs’ work was also included in the group exhibition Another Look at Detroit, curated by Todd Levin at Marlborough Chelsea, New York, in 2014.