1970 Onward

Kiki Smith 1954– | American | Sculpture, Screenprints, Body Art, Drawings The daughter of sculptor Tony Smith, Kiki Smith trained briefly as a medical technician. She is best known for her explorations of bodily fluids—blood and saliva. She either displays these in jars or pours them over sculptures of female and male wax figures that seem to drip secretions. The underlying agenda for this need to play with abjection is not clear. Kiki Smith, Cathedral Layout, 2012 Photo: Ian

Anish Kapoor 1954– | British/Indian | Sculpture Born in Mumbai, India, Anish Kapoor generates 3-D objects in which color, space, and the interplay between the visible and invisible predominate. His strange-looking objects are made from diverse materials, often on a large scale. They have highly polished or intensely pigmented surfaces. Be prepared to find yourself reflected in his work; these are “empty” objects that allow them to act freely on your perception.If you let go a

Thomas Schütte 1954– | German | Sculpture, Mixed Media, Drawings Schütte explores ideas from several disciplines in his work. He makes sculptures which range from small, doll-like models to large pieces, often of architectural structures, similar to dolls houses. The human figure, scale, and presence are always apparent. His work encourages an open-ended imagination and questioning of the human condition and experience. Thomas Schütte, Efficiency Men, 2005 KEY WORKS:   As If

Bill Viola 1951– | American | Video, Installations, Photography Viola is one of a very small minority that uses video to genuinely great effect. He tackles age-old subjects, such as birth, death, and human relationships with experience and understanding, and builds up pictures using slow-motion processes of painting. He also uses the technology to involve the viewer in creating the final image. One of the reasons why he is so successful and convincing is that he does not use

Antony Gormley 1950– | British | Sculpture, Installations Gormley is an artist of increasing stature who has never been afraid to go against the grain of fashion. His characteristically (but not exclusively) male figures stand in landscapes and urban situations and are made of metal, visibly soldered together in static poses. They are casts of the artist’s own body made from plaster moulds of himself, then coated with wet plaster, which dries. He is then cut out of the result

Jeff Wall 1946– | Canadian | Photography, Conceptual Art Wall produces immaculate cibachrome photographs presented in steel frames and illuminated from behind in light boxes. The expectation created by their detailed realism is often contradicted by their curious subject matter and/or strange titles. In fact, they are carefully staged and posed artificial tableaux, maybe using actors. Wall’s photographs are a clever and near play on what is real and what is art. Jeff Wall, T

El Anatsui 1944– | African | Sculpture, Mixed Media Anatsui was born in Ghana and works in Nigeria. His astonishing works are composed of thousands of small folded and crumpled pieces of metal—sourced from local recycling plants—attached together with copper wires. These highly original works, which are flexible and shimmering, assume different forms and appearances and are created by teams of local workers. El Anatsui, Stressed World, 2011, Aluminum and copper wire, 442 x 59

Sean Scully 1945– | Irish/American | Oils; Pastels Scully is noted for his high-minded abstract art (he believes in pure painting as high art). The favored form is large, simple, horizontal and vertical stripes, and the technique emphasizes the qualities of paint through earthy grey colors and the subtle interplay of two and three dimensions. His works are sometimes made from separate panels. An “art for art’s sake” of great refinement. Sean Scully, Precious , 1981. Oil on ca

Anselm Kiefer 1945– | German | Oils; Acrylics; Mixed Media; Sculpture; Photography A brilliant, charismatic, talented, dictatorial fanatic, Kiefer conceives on an apocalyptic scale. His energy for creating vast artistic schemes is manic. Very much in fashion and enthralls many who regard any criticism of him as impertinent, and ordinary praise as insufficient. He claims to be concerned with all the major issues of our day, especially Germany’s place in history. Missouri, Miss

James Turrell 1943– | American | Installations; Land Art Turrell produces gallery installations and tunnel projections that are light-filled spaces. He wants to capture the physical reality (rather than the symbolic) of light and space. In Turrell, the viewer is asked to move about, and becomes so involved and absorbed that you experience a different level of consciousness (spiritual or cosmic). James Turrell Skyspace I, 1974 Lunette , 1974 KEY WORKS:   Lunette , 1974 (New Yo

Christian Boltanski 1944– | French | Sculpture; Installations; Photography Boltanski is a Frenchman who produces disturbing installations that are gloomy, dimly lit, and mysterious. He often selects relics of lost childhood, death, anonymity, and the Holocaust. Boltanski attempts to create a visual requiem for all innocent victims. He brings a new wistful subject matter, to which he brings a new twist. Christian Boltanski, Personnes (Persons/Nobodies) (2010). Exhibition view

Rebecca Horn 1944– | German | Installations; Video Horn is the creator of highly original installations. Some involve machinery that may drip blood-like paint, or flap wings, and are generally surprising or unpredictable. Her work is compulsive viewing, often creating disturbing or compelling trains of thought (which is what she is after). Many of the ideas, perfected, create many breakdowns. Rebecca Horn, White Body Fan , 1972. Photograph. Rebecca Horn Collection. © 2019 Reb

Blinky Palermo 1943–77 | German | Sculpture; Mixed Media Palermo’s real name was Peter Heisterkamp. He was a short-lived refugee from communist East Germany to Düsseldorf (1954) and a disciple of Joseph Beuys. He adopted the pseudonym Palermo of a notorious gangster in the film The Godfather  (1972). Palermo’s work was to use art as a means of modern salvation. This pursuit of redemption ran too far ahead of the achievement. Blinky Palermo Retrospective 1964-1977 KEY WORKS:  

Gilbert and George 1943– and 1942– | British | Performance Art; Photography; Mixed Media Gilbert and George are highly successful, narcissistic couple who regularly appear in their own work as two cheap-suited “living sculptures,” and started as real-life “living sculptures.” The large “photopieces” (produced since 1971) are technically very impressive. Their subject matter comes out of inner-city decay and is openly moralistic and politically subversive to all sides, to libe

Jan Dibbets 1941– | Dutch | Photography; Installations Dibbets is a photographer, black-and-white, and color, as well as a maker of installations. His paintings are precise, with exacting and meticulous qualities—formal and dry—and their limited experiments with perspective and geometry produce installations that are strong sociological or political observations and critiques of capitalism. His work reveals a traditional Dutch interest in perspective and order that goes back

Bruce Nauman 1941– | American | Installations; Performance Art; Sculpture; Conceptual Art; Video Regarded as one of the gurus of the official art world, Nauman aims to examine, document, and explore the boundaries of artistic activity, human behavior, performance, humiliation, stress, and frustration. He works in many media—video, performance, neon, installation, sculpture, and printmaking. He claims to be communicating his observations of human nature and examining social si

Sigmar Polke 1941–2010 | German | Photography; Oils; Mixed Media Polke’s family migrated from East to West Germany in 1953. His work in the 1960s and 1970s can often be described as a chaotic appropriation of images from consumer society, painted onto unorthodox surfaces. His paintings are sometimes claimed to be attacking cliché-ridden banalities of current society, and operate at an ironical level of consciousness. Property from an Important European Collection 10 Ο Sigmar

Tracey Emin b. 1963 | British | Installations; Conceptual Art; Sculpture; Video Emin is one of the great survivors in the art world. She is deeply and admirably loyal to her friends, colleagues, the students she teaches, the Royal Academy, and many worthy charitable causes. But what of her art? It is by this that she will ultimately be remembered, or not. In her signature piece My Bed  she laid bare her tragically unhappy youth (raped at 13; endless promiscuity; transient rel

Grayson Perry b. 1960 | British | Mixed Media; Ceramics; Textiles; Metalwork; Drawings Perry is one of the most intelligent artists working today. Realising the necessity of establishing a persona which would interest the media, he presented himself as a transvestite. Having satisfied the media’s agenda, he now makes it pay attention to his art. Deeply interested in his fellow human beings, he explores what makes them tick in most subtle ways. Although known for his ceramic p

Keith Haring 1958–90 | American | Drawings; Oils; Mixed Media; Sculpture Haring was formally trained and first made his mark as a graffiti artist in the New York subway. In later life he was principally interested in marketing his easily recognizable images (simplistic pin men depicted with thick black outlines, participating in various inconsequential activities) via T-shirts, badges, and so on. The epitome of art and the artist as a brand image. He died of AIDS in 1990. Unt