Anish Kapoor

Mastering material, space and colour

Born in Mumbai in 1954, Anish Kapoor lives and works in London.
He’s one of the most well-known contemporary sculptors. His mastery of diverse materials as well as the presence of his works in public spaces are what have embedded his status and recognizability in art and popular culture.
The materials favoured by Anish Kapoor are differing and sometimes unusual; cement, rusted steel, fiberglass, PVC, granite, alabaster, stainless steel, marble, wax and pigments.
The man made or natural materials are manipulated, their stationary and dynamic qualities are worked with in order to create a form that becomes a medium with which the artist communicates. Colour and material are the other fundamental elements to Kapoor’s work; they become the vessels through which he communicates.
Colour is an essential element of his oeuvre and is fundamental for the viewer’s perception of form. The form, in turn, expresses the nature of the material.
Specific dualities are present in his work and vary from purity and chaos, density and void, to smooth and rough. These are all dualities that are at times present simultaneously and that can be adopted by different components of the work.
Kapoor’s exercises in colour focused on the primary colours blue, red and yellow. The artist has moved on to experiment with other tones throughout his career.
Red has been one of the most prominent and frequently explored by Kapoor; its deep, visceral and associative qualities being particularly significant both for the artist and for the general perception of the public. Colour in his works is always conceived not as an example of what it is, but as the colour itself embodied.
Another preoccupation of the artist is space, many of his works lie on the threshold between subject and object as well as space only as a notion, implying there is something, the void, beyond it.
The auto-generated is also important for Kapoor as he is interested in an artwork’s independence from the artist as it surrenders itself, often through mechanically dynamic means, and becomes a force and a catalyst for developments within the work.
Amongst his most recent solo shows we mention: Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, Italy (2023), Gallerie dell’Accademia di Venezia and Palazzo Manfrin, Venice, Italy (2022), Modern Art Oxford, UK (2021); Houghton Hall, Norfolk, UK (2020); Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich, Germany (2020);Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA) Museum & Taimiao Art Museum of Imperial Ancestral Temple, Beijing (2019), Fundácion CorpArtes, Santiago, Chile (2019), Pitzhanger Manor, London (2019), Serralves, Museu de Arte Contemorânea, Porto (2018); Parque de la Memoria, Buenos Aires (2017); Museo d'Arte Contemporanea di Roma (MACRO), Rome (2016); Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo (MUAC), Mexico City (2016).

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Mastering material, space and colour

Artists