Collection: John Lurie

John Lurie (born 1952) is an American musician, actor, painter and filmmaker whose work has been central to the downtown New York avant-garde scene since the late 1970s. As founder and leader of the Lounge Lizards, he developed a practice of experimental jazz that drew on No Wave, free improvisation and film noir. Lurie appeared as an actor in films by Jim Jarmusch, including Stranger Than Paradise (1984) and Down by Law (1986), and created and starred in the television series Fishing with John (1991). Following illness in the 1990s he turned increasingly to painting, producing works in watercolour and gouache that combine text and image in a tragicomic register; these have been exhibited internationally and published in several books.