Remembering Lucia Di Luciano, Rosa von Praunheim, and Kathleen Goncharov
This week, we honor an Italian painter, a filmmaker who chronicled queer life, and a beloved museum curator.
This week, we honor an Italian painter, a filmmaker who chronicled queer life, and a beloved museum curator.
Artist Lucia Di Luciano (photo courtesy Herald St Gallery)
In Memoriam is published every Wednesday afternoon and honors those we recently lost in the art world.
Lucia Di Luciano (1933–2026)
Pioneering Italian painter
An eminent figure in the Arte Programmata movement of the 1960s, she brought the analytic precision of mathematics to the expressive medium of painting, as exemplified by her series of optically dazzling black and white grid works. She described her work as a "continuous transformation" and painted into her 90s.
Rosa von Praunheim (1942–2025)
Avant-garde filmmaker
A leading figure of the New German Cinema movement, he made boundary-pushing films about gay life in the nation. He is arguably best known for his 1971 full-length feature It Is Not the Homosexual Who Is Perverse, but the Society in Which He Lives, which sparked what many called Germany's "Stonewall moment."
Kathleen Goncharov (1952–2025)
Art curator
Kathleen Goncharov in Venice (photo courtesy Gracie Mansion)
She was most recently senior curator at the Boca Raton Museum of Art in Florida, where she organized dozens of memorable exhibitions. Highlights of her 40-year career included serving as a United States Commissioner for the 50th Venice Biennale and as curator of the New School Art Collection.
John Axelrod (1946–2026)
Art collector and patron
A supporter of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, since the 1980s, he donated approximately 900 works to the institution and amassed a personal collection focused on Black artists and artists of color.
