Reuben Nakian (August 10, 1897, College Point, New York – December 4, 1986, Stamford, Connecticut) was an American sculptor and teacher of Armenian extraction.

Poet Frank O'Hara was the curator of a major Reuben Nakian retrospective at New York City's Museum of Modern Art in 1966 where the artist was also exhibited in 1930.

In the exhibition's catalog, O'Hara noted: "Nakian is unrepressed, un-neurotic, unabashed in his approach to sensuality, however tortuous his esthetic commitment, and whether his subject be death, bestiality, or Arcadian dalliance.

This explicitness gives the "Nymph and Satyr" plaques a marvelous joy and ease, the "Europa" terra-cottas a voluptuous dignity, and the "Leda and the Swan" drawings an almost comic abandon.

Unlike most sexually oriented images in modern art, from Auguste Rodin to Andy Warhol, one finds no guilt or masochism in a Nakian.