§ ANISH KAPOOR C.B.E., R.A. (INDIAN/BRITISH B. 1954) RED DISC Signed and dated 2011 verso, coated stainless steel 30cm (11.75in) diameter Note: Born in Bombay (now Mumbai), India in 1954, Anish Kapoor has since the 1970s lived and worked in London, studying at Hornsey College of Art and Chelsea School of Art throughout that decade. His intensely distinctive sculptural works have made him a name across the creative and connoisseurial worlds, and it is no exaggeration to describe him as one of the most influential artists of our time. Representing Britain at the XLIV Venice Biennale in 1990, Kapoor went on to win the Turner Prize in 1991, was awarded a CBE in 2003 and a knighthood in 2013, for services to the visual arts. He has had solo shows in such institutions as the Royal Academy of Arts and the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern. Kapoor's simultaneous gravitas and popularity may be attributed to the instantaneous grasp his sculpture achieves over the viewer's mind and feelings; the work asks of you both engagement and astonishment, casting a spell on their audience on several levels, and they are often theatrical, as the word "audience" suggests. Frequently executed at extremes of scale, Kapoor's work is both a feat of engineering and of transmutation of form. He works in the most physical, tangible and earthly of materials - pigment, stainless steel, stone, resin and wax - yet his sculptures utilise understanding of what might be termed the physical sciences through art to suggest, through the utterly physical, the unutterable, and eventually the metaphysical. The concave (therefore also convex) disc, perhaps the sculptural form at which his work most comes to rest philosophically, is the model or epitome of these qualities. The viewer is drawn to look into the strange bottomlessness of the reflective surface, absorbed by the work through its depth of pigmentation and the endlessly shape-shifting forms created within the low bowl. This mesmerising, dream-holding quality means that the viewer experiences and feels the work as opposed to merely observing it; the sculpture engages its viewer, or holder, at a suggestive and psychological, as well as a pleasing physical, level. This work is the product of the artist's profound capacity to render in form his continuing conversation with the world that speaks about light and darkness, presence and absence, the solid and the intangible. The work illustrated here for sale is one such classic disc form. The domestic scale is also a highly unusual and desirable quality given the more familiar and all but "untameable", vast proportions of Kapoor's work.
We found 400830 price guide item(s) matching your search
There are 400830 lots that match your search criteria. Subscribe now to get instant access to the full price guide service.
Click here to subscribe- List
- Grid
-
400830 item(s)/page
Lot 78
Loading...-
400830 item(s)/page