Damien Hirst

Damien Hirst

Damien Hirst is an artist, entrepreneur, and art collector who has been dominating the British art scene since the 1990s. He was born in 1965 in Bristol, England and moved to London in 1984 where he worked for a time in construction. Five years later, he earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts at Goldsmiths College in 1989.

Hirst’s artwork explores the relationship between art, life, and death through different mediums such as installation, sculpture, photography, painting, and drawing. As a teenager, death was fascinating to him and he made regular trips to the anatomy department of Leeds Medical School where he drew inspiration for his drawings. In 1991, he began one of his most famous series, Natural History, where he preserved dead animals in steel and glass tanks with formaldehyde solution. The most famous piece of this series, The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, is a large preserved shark suspended in a tank. This piece is considered one of the most iconic symbols of modern British art and pop culture of the 1990s.

Other well-known works by the artist include For the Love of God (2007), a platinum cast skull set with 8,601 pavé-set diamonds and the site-specific installation Pharmacy (1992). He has created numerous other well-known series featuring butterflies and colourful dots.

In addition to being an accomplished artist, Hirst has worked in a curatorial capacity. In 1994, he curated the group exhibition Some Went Mad, Some Ran Away at the Serpentine Gallery, London and in 2006, the award-winning exhibition In the darkest hour there may be light, also presented at the Serpentine Gallery.

Since 1987, Damien Hirst has had over eighty solo exhibitions and has participated in over two hundred group shows. In 1995, he won the prestigious Turner Prize in recognition of his significant contribution to British art. He also had a major retrospective at the Tate Modern, London in 2012. Today he lives and works in London, Gloucestershire, and Devon.

David Hockney

David Hockney

David Hockney is regarded as one of the most influential British artists of the twentieth-century due to his contribution to the Pop Art movements in the 1960s. He was born in Bradford, England in 1937 and attended the Bradford College of Art from 1953 to 1957. In 1959, he went on to study at the Royal College of Art, London.

As he started gaining popularity from his work in London in the 1960s, Hockney began making frequent trips to the United States. In December of 1963, Hockney traveled to New York to meet Andy Warhol, Dennis Hopper, as well as the curator of twentieth-century art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. When traveling to Los Angeles for the first time in 1964, Hockney was inspired by the landscapes, which prompted him to switch from oil to acrylic paints in order to achieve smoother, flatter, and more vibrant colours. During this time, he experimented with Polaroids, worked on a series of Southern Californian landscapes, and created the first of his famed swimming pool paintings. Hockney also taught in several American institutions throughout the decade including the University of Iowa, the University of Colorado, Boulder, and the University of California, Berkeley.

Hockney’s popularity stemmed from his innovative focus on personal subject matter, depicting the domestic realm. He devised new ways of portraying water, particularly in his painterly articulations of reflections in his swimming pool paintings as seen in A Bigger Splash (1967) and A Lawn Being Sprinkled (1967). He also painted many portraits throughout his career and, as an openly gay artist, is an advocate for gay rights and explores the nature of homosexual relationships in his artwork. 

In addition to painting, Hockney also worked as a draughtsman, a printmaker, a photographer, and a stage designer. In the 1980s, he began experimenting with photo collages with a technique he called ‘joiners’. Using Polaroids and 35mm pictures, he would shoot a single subject from different perspectives and arrange the photos like patchwork to create the final image. Since 2009, Hockney has embraced technology and painted hundreds of landscapes, portraits, and still-lifes using iPhone and iPad applications.

Today, Hockney’s work is frequently exhibited at prestigious institutions internationally. He has been awarded numerous honours and awards, the most distinguished of which was his appointment to the Order of Merit by Queen Elizabeth II in 2012 for his contributions to the arts. Most recently in 2018, he had a major retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY. He currently lives and works in London and California.

Candida Höfer

Candida Höfer

Candida Höfer is a German photographer who is internationally recognized for her large-scale photographs of empty interiors, specifically of cultural spaces such as libraries, museums, and operas as well as zoos and domestic dwellings. She uses photography as a tool to archive places as well as highlight their monumentality when people are absent.

She was born in Eberswalde, Germany in 1944. She studied at the Cologne Academy of Fine and Applied Arts from 1964-1968 and later at the Kunstakedemie Düsseldorf from 1970-1972. Before she began taking colour photographs of interiors and buildings, she worked as a portrait photographer for various newspapers. Her first solo exhibition was at the Konrad Fischer Galerie, Düsseldorf in 1975 and, since then, she has had solo exhibitions throughout Europe and the United States. In addition to her photography practice, she was a professor at the Hochschule für Gestaltung from 1997-2000.

Today, Höfer lives and works in Cologne, Germany. Her works can be found in the collections of the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in California, the Philadelphia Museum of Art in Pennsylvania, the Tate in England, and the Hamburg Banhof in Berlin, Germany. In 2018, she was selected as the recipient of the 2018 Outstanding Contribution to Photography Award, presented by the Sony World Photography awards.

Patrick Hughes

Patrick Hughes

Patrick Hughes was born in Birmingham, England in 1939. He is recognized as a major painter in contemporary British art, known primarily for his creation of reverspective – an optical illusion painted on a three-dimensional surface in which parts of the picture that are seemingly the farthest away are in reality physically the closest.

His first major subject, which sparked immense popularity in the 1970s, was the rainbow. He painted them emerging from trashcans, leaning on the sky, coming through windows, hanging on clothing lines, and pouring out of paint buckets. These were so popular and well received that they were often featured on postcards and prints. Despite the popularity of his rainbows, Hughes is best known for his reverspective paintings. These sculpted paintings of interiors, landscapes, and buildings deceive the viewer’s mind with an experience of unreality. As a visual optical illusion, these works express the science of perception along with artistic representation of space.

In addition to his artistic work, Hughes is a designer, teacher, and writer. He has written numerous essays and books on the visual rhetoric of the paradox of his work and on the subject of oxymorons and paradoxes.

Today, Hughes lives and works in London. His work has been exhibited in Europe, Asia, and North America, and is part of public collections at the British Library and the Tate in London, England, the Gallery of Modern Art in Glasgow, Scotland, the Deutsche National Bibliothek in Frankfurt, Germany, and the Denver Art Museum in Colorado.

Alexander Young Jackson

Alexander Young Jackson

Alexander Young Jackson was a Canadian landscape painter and printmaker. He was a founding member of the Group of Seven, the famed group of Canadian landscape painters who believed art could be developed through direct exposure to nature. Jackson, along with the other members of the group, made significant contributions to the historical development of twentieth century Canadian art. 

Jackson was born in 1882 in Montreal, Quebec. He received his first training in the arts while working at lithography firms in both Montreal and Chicago during his youth. From 1896-1899, he studied art at night school at the Conseil des arts et manufactures and at the Art Institute of Chicago from 1906-1907. He also studied Impressionism at the Académie Julian in Paris in 1907.

Upon his return to Canada, Jackson began painting Neo-Impressionist landscapes. His reputation in the art world was steadily growing, however, his career was interrupted by his enlistment in World War I. During the war, he was wounded and transferred to the Canadian War Records branch to work as an official war artist.

After his return from the war, Jackson became dissatisfied with the art scene in Montreal, prompting his move to Toronto where he shared a studio with Canadian painter Tom Thomson. The two, along with other members of the Group of Seven, took many trips to Canada’s wilderness to paint. During this time, Jackson created his famous winter scenes, specifically his paintings of the Arctic. His works were considered daring since, at the time, the wilderness was assumed to be too rugged and wild to be captured on canvas.

Jackson’s paintings of the Canadian wilderness helped shape the perception of Canadian art. His landscapes were, and continue to be, shown throughout Canada and are considered an important part of the country’s art identity and history. He received three honourary doctorates from McMaster University, the University of Saskatchewan, and the University of British Columbia. In 1967, Jackson was awarded the title of a Companion of the Order of Canada and received the medal for lifetime achievement from the Royal Canadian Academy. Jackson spent his last years as an artist-in-residence at the McMichael Gallery (now the McMichael Canadian Art Collection) in Ontario, where he is buried. His work is included in many prestigious private and public collections across the country.

Sarah Anne Johnson

Sarah Anne Johnson

Sarah Anne Johnson is a multidisciplinary artist who currently lives and works in Winnipeg, Manitoba where she was born in 1976. She uses photography as a primary medium to fabricate imagery that not only showcases a moment in time, but evokes the feelings she has towards the various subjects she depicts. She is celebrated for her ability to incorporate unique materials to her photographs, including paints, re-touching inks and glitter, as well as her various destructive methods such as burning, scratching and gouging.

She completed a BFA at the University of Manitoba in 2002 and an MFA from the Yale University School of Art in 2004. Her graduating exhibition, “Tree Planting”, consisted of 64 colour photographs that depict her experiences tree planting in a replenishing project in Northern Manitoba. Notably, The Solomon R Guggenheim Museum purchased the exhibition for their permanent collection.

Upon her Yale graduation, she was awarded with the Schickle-Collingwood Prize, which helped fund her following artistic projects, all of which engage with the relationship between photography and memory. House on Fire is one of Johnson’s most notable ongoing projects, which centers on the artist’s memory of her grandmother who underwent gruesome experimental treatments for depression.

Johnson has since received many awards and grants, including the inaugural Grange Prize and a Canada Council Major Grant in 2008. She has participated in various residencies and has taught at the Yale School of Art, Emily Carr University and the University of Manitoba. Her work has been featured in solo and group exhibitions worldwide, most notably at the Met Breuer in New York a total of three times.

Anish Kapoor

Anish Kapoor

Anish Kapoor is a British-Indian sculptor, internationally recognized for his Post-minimalist and large-scale public artworks. Born in Mumbai, India in 1954, Kapoor briefly studied engineering in Israel before attending the Hornsey College of Art, London in 1973 where he studied under British sculptor Paul Neagu. After enrolling in the Chelsea School of Art for postgraduate studies, Kapoor returned to India, feeling that his work had strong ties to his home country. During this period, he created his first major pigment sculpture and he quickly gained an international reputation.

Throughout his career, Kapoor has experimented with a variety of materials including mirrors, stone, wax, PVC, and vantablack and has created works of both geometric and biomorphic forms. His works aim to create voids; pieces that are not holes, but spaces full of absences. He has created several iconic public works in cities around the world including Sky Mirror in Nottingham, England and Cloud Gate, a site-specific sculpture in Millennium Park, Chicago that is lovingly nicknamed, ‘The Bean’ by locals.

Kapoor represented Britain at the Venice Biennale in 1990 and won the Turner Prize the following year. He was named a Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire in 2003 and he was awarded Knighthood for his contribution to the visual arts in 2013. A major retrospective of his work was held at the Museo Universiatrio Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico City in 2016.

Today, Kapoor lives and works in London. His work can be found in the collections of the MoMA in New York, NY, the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., and the Tate in London, England among many other prestigious international institutions.

Alex Katz

Alex Katz

Alex Katz is an American painter recognized for his distinctive style of portraiture. He was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1927. As a teenager, he attended the Woodrow Wilson High School for its art program and in 1946, he began his studies at The Cooper Union Art School in Manhattan, where he was trained primarily in Modernist art theories and techniques.

Katz’s paintings are almost equally divided into the genres of portraiture and landscape, though his portraiture is more well-known and celebrated. In his early career, he strived for realism in his paintings. He painted his friends and his wife, Ada, in his characteristic style of flat, planes of colour. He often worked from painted cut-outs of canvas which were mounted on contoured wood and, later, he would paint these shapes directly on cut wood and aluminum. In the 1960s, Katz painted large-scale paintings, often of faces, and began painting groups of people. He depicted the lives of artist, poets, critics and other colleagues. In 1965, he began printmaking. Throughout his career he has produced many editions in silkscreen, lithography, etching, woodcut and linoleum cut. In the late 1980s and into the 1990s, he focused on large landscape paintings which envelope the viewer in nature.

Today, Katz lives and works in SoHo, New York City. His work has been shown in more than two hundred solo exhibitions and five hundred group exhibitions internationally and is included in the collections of more than one hundred public institutions worldwide. He has received many awards and recognitions throughout his lifetime including the 2007 Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Academy Museum, New York.

KAWS

KAWS

KAWS, whose real name is Brian Donnelly, is a New York-based artist who has made his name as one of the foremost graffiti artists in the world. Born in 1974 in Jersey City, New Jersey, he graduated from the School of Visual Arts in New York where he obtained a Bachelor of Fine Arts specializing in illustration. 

He settled in New York City in the 1990s post-graduation and began his career as a graffiti artist in addition to working freelance in animation design for Disney. His artistry started out with subverting the images and advertisements featured on bus shelters, phone booths and billboards. He would remove the existing advertisements from their casings and add his own unique artistic elements before putting them back. The artworld quickly took notice and his notoriety and popularity reached unexpected heights. 

In the late 90s, KAWS designed and produced limited edition vinyl toys that instantly became a big hit with the global art toy collecting community, particularly in Japan. He also began collaborating on different toys which redesigned iconic cartoon characters including Mickey Mouse, the Michelin Man and SpongeBob SquarePants. The artist is also known for his prolific print series and paintings, which have done exceedingly well at auction, more often than not selling significantly more than the high estimates. Similar to his sculptures, his paintings feature unique caricature figures and frequently portray subverted versions of famous American cartoons. His unique iconography has also made its way into the commercial sphere, as KAWS has collaborated with many fashion and cosmetic brands including Marc Jacobs, Comme des Garçons, Nike, Uniqlo, Kiehl’s and Vans.

KAWS’ museum shows include solo exhibitions at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, the Modern Art Museum in Texas and the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Connecticut. Other international eminent galleries include Galerie Perrotin with locations in New York, Paris, Hong Kong and Tokyo, as well as Skarstedt Gallery in New York. The artist currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

William Kentridge

William Kentridge

William Kentridge is a South African artist born in Johannesburg in 1955. He is best known for his prints, drawings, and animated films. In these films, Kentridge draws and erases with charcoal, recording his process at each state. He then displays a projection of the looped images with the final, highly worked drawing. These images are deeply engaged with the trauma of Apartheid. The process of recording history is constructed from reconfigured fragments to arrive at a fluid understanding of the past. “My work is about the provisionality of the moment,” the artist has said.

Kentridge studied politics and African history at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg before continuing his education in Fine Art at the Johannesburg Art Foundation and the École Jacques Lecoq in Paris. His interest in theatre is apparent in his style and desire to connect film and drawing. His work is also inspired by artistic satirists like Honoré Daumier, Francisco de Goya, and William Hogarth. Kentridge gained international acclaim for his short film series 9 Drawings for Projection (1989-2003). In 2016, his solo exhibition “Thick Time” opened at White Chapel Gallery in London, evoking 1920s technology and Dadaist collage. He has also directed several operas, most notably Wozzeck in 2017.

He is the recipient of honorary doctorates from several universities including Yale and the University of London. He has lectured at Harvard and served as visiting professor in Contemporary Art at Oxford University. His works are held in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Tate Gallery in London, and the Goetz Collection in Munich, among others. Kentridge continues to live and work in Johannesburg.