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.

Anslem Kiefer

Anslem Kiefer

Anselm Kiefer is a German painter and sculptor known for his political and often controversial work. He was born in Donaueschingen, Germany just two months before the end of World War II. He studied pre-law and Romance Languages at the University of Freiburg but, after a few semesters, switched to study art. In 1971, Kiefer established a studio in Hornbach, Germany where he worked until 1992. He since has lived and worked in France.

In the early years of his career, he focused on performance art. He mimicked Nazi salutes while in costume throughout various cities in Europe with the intention of reminding people of the consequences of the Third Reich. In 1969, his first solo exhibition – Besetzungen (Occupations) at Galerie Kaiserplatz – displayed photographs of these performances, as well as a host of other controversial subjects.

In the 1970s, Kiefer began experimenting with unconventional materials in his painting and sculptural practice including dried plants, ash, broken glass, lead, and shellac. His paintings expanded on the themes of his work of the previous decade as he continued to confront his country’s dark past with themes surrounding the Nazi rule. Kiefer’s work is also inspired by Germany’s history and culture including Paul Celan’s poetry and spiritual concepts of Kabbalah, a school of thought originating from Judaism. Kiefer also works in book design, set design, woodcuts, and watercolors.

Kiefer was chosen to represent Germany at the 1980 Venice Biennale and again in 1997. Numerous solo exhibitions of his work have been held throughout Europe, the United States, and Japan. He was the recipient of the Wolf Prize in 1990 and the Premium Imperiale from the Japan Art Association in 1999. Kiefer’s work is held in the collections of the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin, Germany, the MoMA, the Guggenheim Museum, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, NY, the Detroit Institute of Arts in Michigan, Tate Modern in London, England, the Art Gallery of Ontario in Ottawa, the National Gallery of Australia in Parkes, Canberra, and many more.

Jeff Koons

Jeff Koons

Jeff Koons was born in York, Pennsylvania in 1955 and is regarded as one of the most famous contemporary artists, widely known for his Neo-Pop sculptures. Throughout his career, he has challenged notions of traditional art, encouraging top collectors to revise their notions of what a fine collection looks like. He is a champion of kitsch as well as of the appropriation of tacky objects amassed from popular culture, rendering him a controversial figure in the artworld. He is also considered a relentless self-promoter and marketing genius. 

Koons studied at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore as well as the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. After graduating, he moved to New York and worked at the membership desk at the Museum of Modern Art. During this period, he began experimenting with sculpture, deriving inspiration from a miscellaneous array of objects you might find at a garage sale such as garish inflatable rabbits and flowers. In 1980, he left the museum and sold mutual funds and stocks at First Investors Corporation in order to finance artwork that eventually became part of The New Series, which consisted of vacuum cleaners and shampoo polishers displayed in plexiglass vitrines. Continuing in the vein of creating sculptures of unexpected objects, he embarked on The Equilibrium Series, consisting of a series of basketballs floating in tanks of water. He is most recognized for his colossal inflatable balloon dog sculptures. 

Koons has been the subject of various blockbuster exhibitions. Notably, in 2014, The Whitney Museum in New York held a major retrospective of his body of work. He has also done solo shows at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, The Helsinki City Art Museum and the Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art in Oslo. In addition to his high-profile exhibitions, he has received many prestigious awards and accolades including the State Department’s Medal of Arts and being named an honorary member of the Royal Academy in London. Impressively, he holds the title for the most expensive artwork sold at auction by a living artist. His stainless steel sculpture of a rabbit created in 1986 sold at Christie’s New York for $91.1 million with fees. He continues to live and work in New York City.

Fernand Léger

Fernand Léger

Fernand Leger was born in Argentan, France, in 1881. Most known for cubism, his work spanned many varied focuses and styles, with different inspirations. Bright primary colours and large rounded forms act as distinctive components within most works, Leger’s style is iconic and easy to recognize.

Leger’s early work shows impressionism influence, which soon transitioned into a stronger cubist vision. Leger exhibited paintings at the Salon Des Independants in 1911, which encouraged his recognition as a major name in Cubism. In 1914, he was drafted into the war, the experience of which inspired interest in the human figure, as is displayed in many works and paintings by Leger.  Leger’s later work mirrored his interest in social equality and his paintings often depicted large groups of people, such as union workers in industrial landscapes. After relocating to New York In 1931, his work influenced many New York School painters.

The artist’s legacy lives on through cubist forms, bold colours, and art as something that ‘everyone can understand.’ In 1952, he created two murals that were installed in the United Nations headquarters in New York City. Today, his works can be found in the Museum Of Modern Art in New York, in the Art Institute Of Chicago, London’s Tate Gallery, Centre Pompidou in Paris, and the Albertina in Vienna.

Roy Lichtenstein

Roy Lichtenstein

Roy Lichtenstein was an American pop artist famously known for his comic-inspired work which played a vital role in the Pop Art movement of the 1960s.

Lichtenstein was born in Manhattan, New York in 1923. He left New York for Ohio State University to study Fine Arts, though his studies were interrupted for three years due to his Army enlistment in World War II. After the war, he finished his Bachelor’s degree and went on to obtain a Master of Fine Arts at Ohio State University. He was later hired by the university as an art instructor. 

After nearly a decade of working and living between Ohio and New York City, Lichtenstein moved to upstate New York where he adopted an art practice in reaction to the Abstract Expressionist style. Instead of painting abstract works devoid of subjects, Lichtenstein took his imagery directly from comic books and advertisements.

The 1960s marked the height of Lichtenstein’s international fame. He moved back to New York City and painted his most famous works including Drowning Girl (1963), painted from a story in DC Comic’s Secret Hearts #83. Many critics questioned Lichtenstein’s originality since his works were near replicas of existing comic book panels. He always stood by his work and legitimized it by claiming its ability to take low art and elevate it to a high art context.

In 1964, Lichtenstein was the first American to exhibit at the Tate. In the following years he exhibited at other institutions throughout Europe. During this period, Lichtenstein also reproduced masterpieces by Picasso, Cézanne and Mondrian, recreating them with his own unique, hard-edge style. Later in his career he also reproduced works by Van Gogh, as he was continually inspired by art history.

Lichtenstein worked on many commissions as well including a Pop Art bedroom suite at the Palace Hotel in St. Mortiz, a BMW Art Car, the DreamWorks Records logo as well as public works in Barcelona, New York and other cities throughout the United States. Today, his work can be found in the collections the of the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum Ludwig in Cologne and the National Gallery of Australia. In 1999, the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation was founded which holds hundreds of his works.

Robert Longo

Robert Longo

Robert Longo is an American artist best known for his large-scale, realistic charcoal drawings imbued with political and societal themes. He was born in Brooklyn, New York and was raised in Long Island. In his youth, Longo was inspired to become involved in politics after the 1970 Kent State University Massacre, an event which prompted the protests against the US invasion of Cambodia. A deceased student in the massacre, who was pictured in a popular press photo, was a former classmate of Longo’s. Ever since, Longo’s work has been centered on political themes such as power, authority, and social injustice.

He began his studies at the University of North Texas. However right before completing his degree, he left to study in Florence, Italy. From 1973-1975, Longo studied Fine Arts at the State University College in Buffalo, New York. In 1977, along with his life-long friend Cindy Sherman, he moved to New York City to participate in the underground art scene. Throughout the late 1970s and into the 1980s, Longo showed his work in numerous exhibitions and was involved in the underground culture of performances, alternative magazines, rock bands, and non-profit creative spaces. In 1986, he worked on commercial music videos and directed his first film.

His artworks are part of several important public collections such as the Guggenheim Museum, the MoMA, and the Jewish Museum in New York, NY, the Tate in London, England, and many more. Today, Longo lives and works in New York City.

Robert Mangold

Robert Mangold

Robert Mangold is an American minimalist painter, whose artistic representations of shapes and geometric objects unexpectedly derive from Abstract Expressionism. Mangold employs the characteristics of abstraction as a genesis, in the sense that his paintings contain abstract compositions as means to produce a contemplative response. Unlike typical abstract and expressionist art which emphasizes colour and gesture, however, Mangold’s minimalist pieces explore the weight of a work and use material as a means to dictate the aesthetic and feeling of a work by endowing either lightness or heaviness. 

 Mangold was born in 1937 and spent most of his childhood in New York State. He studied painting, sculpture and drawing at the Cleveland Institute of Art, and upon graduating in 1959, was awarded a fellowship at the Yale Summer School of Music and Art. The fellowship proved to be of great influence, as he continued to study at Yale to pursue his Master’s degree. After completing his formal education, he moved to New York City and was hired as a guard at the Museum of Modern Art. During this time, he met a variety of other aspiring artists such as Robert Ryman and Sol LeWitt. After several months, he was promoted to an assistant’s position in the museum’s library, and later, ended up having his own artwork being exhibited on the MoMA’s walls.

 Mangold’s first solo exhibition as a minimalist painter occurred in 1964. Since then, major exhibitions of his work have occurred at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and the the Musée D’Orsay in Paris.

Henry Moore

Henry Moore

Sculptor Henry Moore is heralded as one of the most significant British artists of the twentieth-century. He is known for his semi-abstract bronze sculptures of human figures, typically in reclining positions. His forms, often suggestive of human bodies or landscapes, consist of hollow spaces and organic shapes. Moore’s work was instrumental to the introduction of Modernism in England and Europe.

Moore was born in Castleford, Yorkshire, England in 1898. In his youth, he was encouraged by his teachers to pursue a career in the arts but his education was put on hold when he served in the British Army during World War I. After an injury resulting from a gas attack at the Battle of Cambrai, he returned to England where he became a student at the Leeds School of Art and, later, he also attended the Royal College of Art in London.

During the 1930s, Moore’s reputation continued to grow but his career was, once again, put on hold due to war. During World War II he was recruited as an Official War Artist and produced his now famous drawings of people taking shelter in the London Underground during the Blitz. Afterwards, Moore was able to return to his sculptural practice and use the reputation he gained during the war to exhibit his work to a larger audience. 

In the 1940s and 1950s, he gained international success. In 1943, his first solo exhibition in the United States was held at the Buchholz Gallery in New York. His first major international retrospective was held at the MoMA in New York in 1946. In 1948, at the first Venice Biennale since the war, Moore was awarded the International Sculpture Prize. His sculptures were celebrated for representing optimism, humanist values, and an opposition to Fascism. Today, his works are part of numerous collections internationally and his public artworks are found around the world.

The Henry Moore Foundation, established in 1977 by the artist’s family, encourages a public appreciation for the arts and supports sculpture projects, exhibitions, and the preservation of Moore’s legacy. Although exceptionally wealthy during his life, Moore lived modestly and endowed most of his earnings to the foundation.