This offset lithograph poster, published in 2009, was published in an unsigned edition; however, the present print was, exceptionally, hand signed by Anish Kapoor for the present owner in black marker lower right front
Below is an excerpt from a contemporaneous article about the installation:
"Anish Kapoor's towering new sculpture, Tall Tree and the Eye, has gone up in the courtyard of The Royal Academy of Arts ready for an official unveiling on Tuesday as a major exhibition of the artist's work opens in the London gallery.
The steel structure, an arrangement of 76 shiny spheres which bubble up to the level of the surrounding Palladian buildings, is inspired by the words of the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke.
"It is a conjunction of images I have always loved in his Sonnets to Orpheus and this work is, in a way, a kind of eye which is reflecting images endlessly," said Kapoor. Fifteen metres high, it has a look of weightlessness when viewed from the ground below. "Now it is up, I am surprised by its fragility," added the artist.
"There is nothing heavy or imposing about it, but there is something quite improbable. You cannot tell how it has been put up and that is part of its mystery and dignity."
The Kapoor said he is intrigued by the empty spaces between the shapes he has made, and by the endless, repeating "fractal images" reflected on its polished surfaces. "Inevitably the shape recalls DNA as a reference, but that is not what it is," he said.
Kapoor, who won the Turner Prize in 1991, has become one of the world's most highly-regarded creators of public art since 2002 when his red, trumpet-like work Marsyas, dominated the Tate Modern's Turbine Hall.
Born in Mumbai in 1954, this week he will become the first British contemporary artist to be given all the main galleries at the Royal Academy for a solo show.
"This is a venerable institution where some of the greatest of art of all time has been seen," the sculptor said. "Its galleries are some of the most beautiful spaces in the world. So it is a great honour for me and the academy has been incredibly courageous on going with me on this project."
The show features more than 50 sculptures not seen before, as well as several controversial works, such as Shooting into the Corner in which gobbets of red wax are fired into a gallery wall from a cannon. The mobile centrepiece, or show-stealer, inside the galleries is Svayambh, Kapoor's large moving block of red wax that rubs itself around the doorways and walkways of the gallery. The title of this work comes from a Sanskrit word meaning "self-generated".
Kapoor, who studied at Chelsea School of Art and was elected to the Royal Academy 10 years ago, created the most expensive piece of public art in the world in 2004 with his 20m polished steel shape, Cloud Gate. The piece stood in Chicago for two years and cost $23m to make.
The artist, honoured with a CBE in 2003, is now making the world's largest commission, a £15m series of five pieces, known as the Tees Valley Giants, which will stand in the north-east of England.
Anish Kapoor exhibition is at the Royal Academy, London W1, from 26 September to 11 December. "
-The Guardian
Sculptor Anish Kapoor has undertaken investigations into objecthood that have expanded Post-Minimalist practices and
had a profound effect on the course of contemporary sculpture. His monumental Tall Tree & The Eye consists of 73 reflective spheres anchored around three axes. This illusionistic work continues the artist's examination of complex mathematical and structural principles embodied in sculptural form. The mirrored surfaces of the orbs reflect and refract one another, simultaneously creating and dissolving form and space. Images of the surrounding city, including the Nervión river, Daniel Buren's sculptural intervention on the neighboring La Salve Bridge Arcos rojos/Arku gorriak, and the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao itself, are cast into dynamic suspension. Kapoor reminds us of the instability and ephemerality of our vision, and by extension, of our world.
-Courtesy Guggenheim Bilbao