Sven Lukin’s Parade
In summer 2025, Flux Art Conservation had the privilege of treating Parade by Sven Lukin (1934-2022). This multi-component painting was one of many he created in this style during the 1960s. Lukin was a Latvian-American artist known for his role in starting the “Shaped Canvas Movement” of the 1960s. After immigrating to the United States from Riga, Latvia in the 1940s, Lukin pursued a degree in architecture from the University of Pennsylvania from 1953-1956. While he did not end up becoming an architect, Lukin’s mathematical precision and experimental modifications of the substrates in his painted works seem to be reflective of his training.
Lukin primarily worked and showed his art in New York City while starting out as an artist. As he was certainly in good company with many other contemporary painters in the city during the 50s and 60s, Lukin worked to find a unique edge to his art. He seemed to have found it through shaping the various substrates he painted on. Lukin challenged traditional paintings by prioritizing flat finishes on three-dimensional substrates that protruded from the wall.
“When I started shaping the canvas- building it out from the wall into 2-dimensional forms- I said hah-hah! At last I’m alone. But then the whole shaped thing started”
This uniqueness likely ended once the Guggenheim Museum recognized this new trend in painting with their exhibition The Shaped Canvas (December 1964- January 1965) showing the works of Lukin, as well as Paul Feeley, Richard Smith, Frank Stella, and Neil Williams. During this era of Lukin’s work, he primarily made color field paintings. These deceptively simple paintings were made to be absolutely perfect and uniform. Therefore, any imperfections his paintings have obtained as they’ve aged are quite obvious. Perfection does not lend itself to hiding damages.
Parade Canvas, After Treatment
Parade Upper Wooden Form, After Treatment
Parade Lower Wooden Form, After Treatment
Lukin obtained perfection in his paintings by focusing on quality craftsmanship. Parade contains three separate objects, one painted canvas on a custom strainer and two plywood constructions that fit into the canvas like puzzle pieces. Lukin made the wooden forms into completely smooth paint surfaces through adhering a thin, plastic sheet to every visible surface (and even a few surfaces not visible) of the wood. He perfected the unpainted and not visible verso of the wooden forms by filling and sanding every seam, nail hole, or rough edge.
With this attention to detail, it would make sense that Lukin had perfected a method for making these multi-piece paintings like Parade. However, it appears his materials and techniques changed from painting to painting even within the same year. A similar work titled, Dove, owned by the Whitney Museum of Art, is also composed of a canvas and two wooden forms. Dissimilar to Parade, these wooden forms are wrapped with canvas to give them a smoother finish, not plastic. Even when experimenting with materials on a large scale like Parade (7 ½ feet tall to be exact) Lukin did not compromise on craftsmanship and seemed to embrace the challenge that a new material brings.
Detail of one of the fills on the verso of the wooden forms.
Detail of a damaged corner on one of the wooden forms showing the outer, plastic layer.
Upper wooden form, during cleaning.
So, what can we do as conservators to repair perfection? The answer is, unlike Lukin, we are not striving for perfection in the same way he was. The goal with this treatment was to disguise damages just enough so that Lukin’s skill is the focus once again and to prevent further damages from occurring. To do this, we first dry cleaned each component of the work with brush vacuuming and a rubber soot sponge. Then, we used the Modular Cleaning Program to find an aqueous cleaning solution for each surface that would remove the grime where necessary, but not overclean and brighten areas that were less dirty to start. This may mean that some grime is still left on the surface, but with the addition of perfectly smooth fills and some minor inpainting, the aesthetic unity is restored.
To fill the areas where the plastic layer on the wooden forms broke off, we used the following steps:
Created the fill inserts by spreading a thin coating of Flügger, a reversible acrylic spackle, on silicone-coated paper, placing damp wet-strength tissue on top, and spreading another layer of Flügger on the tissue. When dry, the fill material was perfectly smooth on the side that dried on the silicon-coated paper and was flexible enough to be cut with scissors.
These inserts were cut using Mylar templates that were traced from each of the losses and toned with Golden Acrylics.
Toned fills were attached to the wooden forms using more Flügger. Gaps in the seams of the plastic on the wooden forms were also filled with Flügger to prevent further snagging.
Inpainted paint losses, abrasions, and remaining grime on the canvas and the wooden forms using QoR Aquazol Colors, Windsor & Newton Watercolors, and Schmincke Horadam Gouache.
Further examples of filling the losses in the plastic layer:
Once the canvas and two wooden forms were fully cleaned and their losses filled and inpainted, they were carefully installed. To prevent the same damages from occurring to the plastic on the wooden forms, a protective Mylar layer was placed underneath the lower form on the floor and between the wooden forms where they rest on top of each other.
Parade, After Install
For more information, check out these sources:
Colpitt, Frances. “The Shape of Painting in the 1960s.” Art Journal 50, no. 1 (1991): 52–56. https://doi.org/10.2307/777086.
Elizabeth C. Baker, "Solid Anti-Geometry," Artnews, vol. 65 (March 1966): 57.
James R. Mellow, "New York Letter," Art International 13 (January 1969): 57.
Sven Lukin by Raphael Rubenstein
The Shaped Canvas Movement by Emily Lenz
This treatment was also presented by Abby Peterman at the Philadelphia Area Conservation Association Fall General Meeting in 2025. Enjoy the video below!
