Tzaims Luksus
Encyclopedia
Biography
Tzaims Luksus was born in ChicagoChicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
, Illinois
Illinois
Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...
, U.S.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
on January 1, 1932 son of John James [Prince Ivan Yusefovitch Yusupov-Luksiev] and Beulah Maude Wingfield-Driver-Luksus. He is regarded by those who know him as a Renaissance Man. He studied architecture at the University of Pennsylvania
University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania is a private, Ivy League university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States,Penn is the fourth-oldest using the founding dates claimed by each institution...
, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts is a museum and art school in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was founded in 1805 and is the oldest art museum and school in the United States. The academy's museum is internationally known for its collections of 19th and 20th century American paintings,...
(1956) and the University of the Arts and continued studies of fine art at the Atlanta Art Institute, L'accademia di belli arti di Venezia and the Art Academy of Florence, Italy and fine art and Medieval Studies at St. Edmund Hall {college} at Oxford University in England.
Since his interest in architecture was based upon classical Greek and architecture of the Italian Renaissance he was not interested in structural steel and glass. He then continued seriously as a painter of fine art traveling throughout Europe. He took up weaving in Greece and printing in Venice and returning to Philadelphia in 1961 he presented graphics on silk in print for international fashion designers and became a full fledged fashion designer showing in New York in 1966 and in Paris in 1968. He created the Print Explosion internationally in the haute couture during the 1960s and became what the international press regarded the New Christian Dior in fashion design.
Luksus began his career in fashion in 1960 in Athens & Venice 1961 in Philadelphia. He operated his own textile wool weaving mill and silk printing production and design studio in Bennington, Vermont and a couture/ready to wear house: TZAIMS LUKSUS at 550 Seventh Avenue in NYC.
In the mid 1970s he left fashion and fabric design and manufacturing and returned to fine arts. He presented a collection of oils on canvas and oils on paper to the American Academy at Rome for a Prix de Rome in 1981 that was published in folios in 1991 by the Vermont Foundation of the Arts: Theaum Press. In 1986 he created TZ.L International Ltd and became a perfume artist launching his Parfumerie Luxus creating MAN ALIVE and IMMORTELLE under the TZ.L label.
His fabric/fashion work and paintings are in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art is a renowned art museum in New York City. Its permanent collection contains more than two million works, divided into nineteen curatorial departments. The main building, located on the eastern edge of Central Park along Manhattan's Museum Mile, is one of the...
; the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford CT; St. Edmund Hall, Oxford University, Oxford, England; Musee de Tissu de Lyon, France and other major museums and private collections throughout the world including the Museum of Art in Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...
.
He was elected by Council as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in 1974 for his international contribution in arts, manufactures and commerce. He was on the faculty of the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, lecturer and consultant at the Fashion Institute of Technology and lecturer at Pratt Institute, Parson School of Design and Universities around the US.
He founded the Vermont Foundation of the Arts (1989), the Vermont Academy of the Fine Arts (1989), the Vermont Academy of Music (1995), the Bennington Opera House (1995) and the Bennington Council on the Arts (1989), of which he is also the president and executive director.
Among his written works is a play, The Polymachaeroplagidies (1980), and biographic novel, Striking With The Sword of Heaven (1981), a photographic book, The Prince of Prints: The Memoires & Artistry of Tzaims Luksus, FRSA.
Luksus's home in Old Bennington, Vermont
Old Bennington, Vermont
Old Bennington is a village in Bennington County, Vermont, United States. It is located entirely within the town of Bennington. As of the 2000 census, the village had a population of 232....
contains an historic George Stevens & Co pipe organ made in 1842.
Awards
Luksus won both the Neiman Marcus and Coty awards in 1965. He was elected by council to the Royal Society of Arts as a Life Fellow in 1974 for achievement in promoting arts throughout the world and encouraging manufactures and commerce internationally.He is listed in Who's Who in America, Volume 35:1968-1969 through the 39th Edition-1976:1977 and Who's Who in the World, Fifth Edition: 1980-1981