Théo de Luca

Théo de Luca is a PhD candidate in the History of Art. He is currently preparing his doctoral dissertation on seventeenth-century French-born, Rome-based painter Nicolas Poussin, under the supervision of Professor Nicola Suthor.

He received a B.A. in History of Art and Archaeology with a minor in Aesthetics from the Université Paris 1 – Panthéon-Sorbonne, after completing his years of Lettres Supérieures and Première Supérieure at the Lycée Montaigne in Bordeaux. He also holds a Master 1 in Arts, Literatures and Languages from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris, and an M.A. in History of Art with Distinction from University College London (UCL), where his research was supervised by Professor Briony Fer.

At Yale, the Berthe Corr and James Corr Memorial Fellowship has been awarded to him for the 2021-2022 and 2023-2024 academic years. He is also a European Studies Graduate Fellow at The Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center. In Summer 2023, he pursued dissertation research at the Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte, and the learning of German at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, as the recipient of an award from the German Department at Yale and the Max Kade Foundation. In Fall 2023, he was the Daniel Arasse Fellow at the École française de Rome and the Académie de France in Rome – Villa Medici.

The Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König in Cologne published Théo de Luca’s debut book on the 1981 exhibition ‘A New Spirit in Painting,’ before he joined Yale. He presented it at London’s Royal Academy of Arts in 2020. A New Spirit in Painting, 1981: On Being an Antimodern features an essay he authored, as well as interviews he conducted with figures associated with the exhibition, such as Georg Baselitz, Sir Norman Rosenthal, and Sir Nicholas Serota.

In parallel with his research, Théo is active in art criticism with a focus on painting. His writings and interviews have been extensively featured in publications about American and European painters such as Georg Baselitz, Nathaniel Mary Quinn, Ker-Xavier Roussel, and Claire Tabouret. Further details about these projects can be found here.