Principal Provocateur of 1960s Anarchist Group, Dies at 84

‘Ben Morea, an artist and chief provocateur of an anarchist group that rattled New York City in the 1960s, dumping garbage on the steps of Lincoln Center and booby-trapping the stairwell of a Columbia University building with furniture hung from the ceiling and rigged to drop, died on May 2 at his home in Gardner, Colo. He was 84.

Mr. Morea’s former wife, Joan Eagle, said he collapsed while walking on their property, about 60 miles from the New Mexico border. He moved to the region in 1969, living among Native American tribes and working as a lumberjack for nearly four decades before re-emerging in Manhattan as a flea market picker.

Barely 5 feet tall and as thin as a parking meter, Mr. Morea was an abstract painter who wanted to creatively destroy the gap between art and revolution. He published the militant magazine Black Mask and loosely led a band of radicals whose name began Up Against the Wall and ended with a profanity….’ (Michael S. Rosenwald via The New York Times)