Anish Kapoor

Anish Kapoor (born 1954) is a Turner Prize winning sculptor. Kapoor was born in Bombay (Mumbai), India, and attended the Doon School, located in Dehra Dun, India. He moved to England in 1972, where he has lived since. He studied art, first at the Hornsey College of Art and later at the Chelsea School of Art Design.

In the early 1980s, Kapoor emerged as one of a number of British sculptors working in a new style and gaining international recognition for their work. Kapoor works in London, although he frequently visits India and has acknowledged that his art is inspired by both Western and Eastern cultures. His art historical influences include: Mantegna, Beuys, Barnett Newman and Yves Klein.

Works

Kapoor's pieces are frequently simple, curved forms, usually monochromatic and brightly coloured. Most often, the intention is to engage the viewer, evoking mystery through the works' dark cavities, awe through their size and simple beauty, tactility through their inviting surfaces and fascination through their reflective facades. His early pieces rely on powder pigment to cover the works and the floor around them. This practice was inspired by the mounds of brightly coloured pigment in the markets and temples of India. His later works are made of solid, quarried stone, many of which have carved apertures and cavities, often alluding to, and playing with, (earth-sky, matter-spirit, lightness-darkness, visible-invisible, conscious-unconscious, male-female and body-mind). His most recent works are mirror-like, reflecting or distorting the viewer and surroundings.

Created in 1985, Kapoor's work "B6" sold for $1490. The work was small ( 22.00 in (height) x 15.00 in (width)), especially when compared to his later works. [ [http://artsalesindex.artinfo.com/artsalesindex/asi/lots/9205856 Auction Results: Anish Kapoor's "B6"] ] Since the end of the 1990s, Kapoor has produced a number of large works, including "Taratantara" (1999), a 35 metre-tall piece installed in the Baltic Flour Mills in Gateshead, England before renovation began there and "Marsyas" (2002), a large work of steel and PVC that was installed in the Turbine Hall of Tate Modern. A stone arch by Kapoor is permanently placed at the shore of a lake in Lødingen in northern Norway. In 2000, one of Kapoor's works, "Parabolic Waters", consisting of rapidly rotating coloured water, was shown outside the Millennium Dome in London. In 2001, Sky Mirror, a large mirror piece that reflects the sky and surroundings, was commissioned in Nottingham. In 2004, Cloud Gate, a 110-ton stainless steel sculpture, was unveiled at Millennium Park in Chicago. In the Fall of 2006, another large mirror sculpture, also enititled Sky Mirror, was shown in Rockefeller Center, New York. Soon to be completed are a memorial to the British victims of 9/11 in New York, [ [http://www.britishmemorialgarden.org/design.html britishmemorialgarden.org] ] and the design and construction of a subway station in Naples, Italy. [ [http://www.interiordesign.net/index.asp?layout=preview&articleID=CA317909 interiordesign.net] ] Kapoor has also been commissioned to produce five pieces of public art by Tees Valley Regeneration (TVR) [ [http://www.teesvalleyregeneration.co.uk/ Tees Valley Regeneration ] ] collectively known as the "Tees Valley Giants" [ [http://www.stockton.gov.uk/resources/housingregeneration/stratdoc/regstrat.pdf untitled ] ] In late 2007, a work of Kapoor's sold for $2.5 million, above its estimated value of $1.5-2 million dollars. [ [http://artsalesindex.artinfo.com/artsalesindex/asi/lots/10840072 Auction Results: Anish Kapoor's Untitled] ]

In 2007, Kapoor showed "Svayambh", a 1.5 metre carved block of red wax that moved on rails through the Nantes Musée des Beaux-Arts as part of the Biennale estuaire; this piece was shown again in a major show at the Haus Der Kunst in Munich. Kapoor's recent work increasingly blurs the boundaries between architecture and art.

In 2008, the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston exhibited Kapoor's first U.S. mid-career survey. [ [http://www.boston.com/ae/theater_arts/articles/2008/05/30/anish_kapoor_challenges_perceptions_in_a_mind_bending_show_at_the_ica/ Anish Kapoor challenges perceptions in a mind-bending show at the ICA - The Boston Globe ] ]

Awards

Kapoor represented Britain in the 1990 Venice Biennale, where he was awarded the "Premio Duemila"; the following year, he won the Turner Prize. The South Bank Show presented the first full-length television profile of him in February 1999. Solo exhibitions of his work have been held in the Tate and Hayward Gallery in London, Kunsthalle Basel in Switzerland, Reina Sofia in Madrid, the National Gallery in Ottawa, Musee des arts contemporains (Grand-Hornu) in Belgium, the CAPC Museum of Contemporary Art in Bordeaux and at the Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil in Brazil. His work is collected worldwide, notably by the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Tate Modern in London, Fondazione Prada in Milan, the Guggenheim in Bilbao, the De Pont Foundation in the Netherlands and the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa, Japan.

References

External links

* [http://www.lissongallery.com/#/artists/anish-kapoor/ Lisson Gallery: Anish Kapoor]
* [http://www.gladstonegallery.com/kapoor.asp Barbara Gladstone: Anish Kapoor]
* [http://www.sculpture.org.uk/artists/AnishKapoor Anish Kapoor] and [http://www.sculpture.org.uk/portfolio/AnishKapoor Portfolio] at Sculpture.org.uk
* [http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/kapoor/ "Marsyas"] About Kapoor's 2002 installation piece in Tate Modern's Turbine Hall
* [http://www.millenniumpark.org/ "Cloud Gate"] Images and description of Kapoor's public sculpture at Millennium Park, Chicago
* [http://www.nottinghamplayhouse.co.uk/skymirror/ "Sky Mirror"] Website with images and articles on Kapoor's public sculpture in Nottingham, England
* [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/hardtalk/6143008.stm "BBC Hardtalk"] Gavin Esler interviews Anish Kapoor for BBC World (TV), Nov. 11, 2006.
* [http://www.icaboston.org/exhibitions/exhibit/kapoor/ "Boston ICA"] Details and images of Kapoor's exhibt at the ICA.