Anish Kapoor (British/Indian, born )

Anish Kapoor (British/Indian, b.1954) is regarded as one of the most prominent British-Indian sculptors of his generation. He first gained critical recognition for his work in the 1980s; Kapoor is well known for his intense, almost spiritual, outdoor and indoor site-specific works in which he marries a Modernist sense of pure materiality with a fascination for the manipulation of form and the perception of space. Kapoor, who was born in Bombay and moved to London in the 1970s to study art, first worked on abstract and organic sculptures using fundamental natural materials such as granite, limestone, marble, pigment, and plaster. His sculptures extend formal minimalistic precepts through catching the viewer’s attention with rich colors, sensuously refined surfaces, and optical effects of depth and dimension.

Since the mid-1990s, Kapoor has explored the notion of the void by creating works that seem to recede into the distance, disappear into walls or floors, or otherwise destabilize assumptions about the physical world. Through transforming properties of objects and materials, Kapoor’s recent work increasingly blurs the boundaries between architecture, design, and art. He received great critical attention in the United States for Cloud Gate, a permanent 110-ton sculpture of polished stainless steel created for Chicago’s Millennium Park in 2006, and for Sky Mirror, a 35-foot-diameter concave mirror shown in the same year at Rockefeller Center in New York.

Kapoor has reached international status, with solo exhibitions at venues around the world, such as the Tate and Hayward Gallery in London, Kunsthalle Basel, the Haus der Kunst in Munich, and the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston. In 2015, a major exhibition of his work was presented in the gardens of the Palace of Versailles. He represented Britain at the Venice Biennale in 1990, and received the Turner Prize in the following year. Kapoor’s work can be found in collections worldwide, notably in The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Tate Modern in London, the Prada Art Foundation in Milan, and the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao.

He is represented by various galleries including Leslie Sacks Contemporary in Santa Monica, CA and Grosvenor Gallery in London.

Timeline

1954
Born in Bombay, India
1973–1977
Hornsey College of Art, London, UK
1977–1978
Chelsea School of Art, London, UK
1979
Taught at Wolverhampton Polytechnic, Wolverhampton, UK
1982
Artist in Residence, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, UK
1990
Awarded Premio Duemila at the Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy
1991
Turner Prize
1992
Awarded Premio Duemila at the Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy
1997
Honorary Fellowship, London Institute, London, UK
2001
Honorary Fellowship, Royal Institute of British Architecture, London, UK
2003
Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (CBE)
Currently lives and works in London, UK

Exhibitions

2013
DYNAMO, Un siècle de lumière et de mouvement dans l'art 1913-2013, Grand Palais, Galeries Nationales, Paris, France
2012
Anish Kapoor, Lisson Gallery, London, UK (solo)
2009
Anish Kapoor, The Royal Academy, London, UK (solo)
Shooting into the Corner, MAK, Vienna, Austria
Blood Relations, Fabrica, Brighton, UK
Memory, Guggenheim, New York, NY
Anish Kapoor: New Works, Lisson Gallery, London
2008
Anish Kapoor: Memory, Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin, Germany (solo)
In-I Akram Khan and Juliette Binoche, National Theatre, London, UK (solo)
Anish Kapoor, Kukje Gallery, Seoul, South Korea(solo)
Anish Kapoor, Barbara Gladstone Gallery, Brussels, Belgium (solo)
Place/No Place: Anish Kapoor in Architecture, Royal Institute of British Architects, London, UK (solo)
Anish Kapoor, Barbara Gladstone Gallery, New York, NY (solo)
For What We Are About To Receive, Gagosian Gallery, Moscow, Russia
Blood on Paper- the Art of the Book, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UK
2007
Anish Kapoor – Svayambh, Haus der Kunst, Munich, Germany (solo)
Anish Kapoor, Galleria Continua, Beijing, China (solo)
Anish Kapoor – Svayambh, Musee des Beaux-Arts, Nantes, France (solo)
Anish Kapoor. Works on Paper, Gladstone Gallery, New York, NY (solo)
2006
Anish Kapoor, Lisson Gallery, London, UK (solo)
Sky Mirror, Rockefeller Center, (Public Art Fund), New York, NY (solo)
Anish Kapoor, Ascension, BBCC, Rio de Janeiro (solo)
Anish Kapoor, Regen Projects, Los Angeles, CA (solo)
My Red Homeland, CAC Malaga, Spain (solo)
2005
Japanese Mirrors, SCAI, Tokyo, Japan (solo)
2004
Whiteout, Barbara Gladstone Gallery, New York, NY (solo)
Cloud Gate, Chicago Millennium Park, Chicago, IL (solo)
Anish Kapoor, Massimo Minini Gallery, Brescia, Italy (solo)
Melancholia, MAC Grand-Hornu, Belgium (solo)
2003
Painting, Lisson Gallery, London, UK (solo)
Kukje Gallery, Seoul, South Korea (solo)
Galleria Continua, San Gimignano, Italy (solo)
Idomeneo, Glyndebourne (set design) (solo)
My Red Homeland Kunsthaus, Bregenz, Austria; National Archaeological Museum, Naples, Italy (solo)
2002
Anish Kapoor, Marsyas, 3rd Unilever Commission for the Turbine Hall, Tate Modern, London, UK (solo)
2001
Barbara Gladstone, New York, NY (solo)
Taidehalli, Helsinki, Finland (solo)
2000
Taratantara, installation, BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, London; Piazza del Plebiscito, Naples, Italy (solo)
Blood Solid, fig-1, London, UK (solo)
The Edge of the World, permanent installation, Axel Vervoordt Kanal, Wijnegem, Belgium (solo)
Blood, Lisson Gallery, London, UK (solo)
Regen Projects, Los Angeles, CA (solo)
1999
Museé d’art contemporain de Bordeaux, Bordeaux, France (solo)
Scai The Bathhouse, Tokyo, Japan (solo)
1998
Hayward Gallery, London, UK (solo)
Barbara Gladstone Gallery, New York, NY (solo)
Anish Kapoor, Lisson Gallery, London, UK (solo)
1996
Galleria Massimo Minini, Brescia, Italy (solo)
Kunst-Station St Peter, Cologne, Germany (solo)
1995
Lisson Gallery, London, UK (solo)
De Pont Foundation for Contemporary Art, Tilburg, The Netherlands (solo)
1994
Echo, Kohji Ogura Gallery, Nagoya, Japan (solo)
1993
Barbara Gladstone Gallery, New York, NY (solo)
Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Tel Aviv, Israel (solo)
1992–1993
San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art, La Jolla, CA (traveled to Des Moines Art Center, Des Moines, IW; The National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Canada; The Power Plant, Toronto, Canada) (solo)
1991
Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain, organized in cooperation with The British Council (solo)
Anish Kapoor, Kunstverein, Hannover, Germany (solo)
1990–1991
Anish Kapoor Drawings, Tate Gallery, London, UK (solo)
Le Magasin, Centre National d’Art Contemporain, Grenoble, France (solo)
1990
Anish Kapoor, XLIV Biennale di Venezia, British Pavilion, Venice, Italy (solo)
1986
Anish Kapoor: Recent Sculpture and Drawings, University Gallery, Fine Arts Center, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA (solo)
Barbara Gladstone Gallery, New York, NY (solo)
Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo, Norway (solo)
1985
Kunsthalle, Basel, Switzerland (solo)
1984
Barbara Gladstone Gallery, New York, NY
1982
Lisson Gallery, London, UK (solo)
1980
Patrice Alexandre, Paris, France (solo)

Public Collections

Musee d'Art Contemporain de Lyon, France
Museo di Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Trento, Italy
Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, TX
Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA
Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix, AZ
Reina Sofía National Museum, Madrid, Spain
Tate Gallery, London, UK
Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, CA
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia
Centro per l'Arte Contemporanea Luigi Pecci, Prato, Italy
Courtauld Institute of Art, London, UK
De Pont Foundation for Contemporary Art, The Netherlands
Fukuoka Art Museum, Fukuoka, Japan
Harvard University Art Museums, Cambridge, MA
MAXXI Museo Nazionale delle Arti del XXI Secolo, Rome, Italy

Literature

2008
Crone, Rainer and Alexandra Von Stosch. Anish Kapoor, Svayambh. New York, London: Prestel, 2008 (catalogue)
Baume N., Jacob, M. J. and Partha Mitter. Anish Kapoor: Past, Present, Future. The Institute of Contempory Art. Boston: MIT Press, 2008 (catalogue)
Anish Kapoor: Memory. New York: Guggenheim Museums Publications, 2008 (catalogue)
2007
Svayambh, Anish Kapoor. Nantes, France: Fage editions and Musée des Beaux- Arts de Nantes, 2007 (catalogue)
2006
Frances, Fernando and Angela Molina. Anish Kapoor, My Red Homeland. Malaga, Spain: CAC Malaga, 2007 (catalogue)
2005
Lewison, Jeremy and Laurent Busine. Anish Kapoor, Drawings. Koln, Germany: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther Konig, 2005 (catalogue)
2004
Vidler, Anthony. Anish Kapoor, Whiteout. Milan: Charta, 2004 (catalogue)