Anish Kapoor

Anish Kapoor (born 1954) is a sculptor.

Born in Mumbai to a Punjabi-Hindu father and an Iraqi-Jewish mother, Kapoor attended the prestigeous Doon School, located in Dehra Dun, India. He moved to England in 1972, where he has lived since. He studied art, first at the Hornsey College of Art, and later at the Chelsea School of Art Design. He currently works in London, although he frequently visits India, and has acknowledged that his art is inspired by both Western and Eastern cultures. His art historical influences include: Mantegna, Beuys, Barnett Newman, and Yves Klein.

In the early 1980s, Kapoor emerged as one of a number of British sculptors working in a new style and gaining international recognition for their work (the others included Tony Cragg, Richard Deacon, Anthony Gormley, and Bill Woodrow).

Kapoor's pieces are often simple, curved forms, usually monochromatic, and frequently brightly coloured. His early pieces rely on powder pigment to cover the works and the floor around them. This practice was inspired by the mounds of brightly coloured pigment in the markets and temples of India. His later works are made of solid, quarried stone, many of which have carved apertures and cavities, often alluding to, and playing with, dualities (earth-sky, matter-spirit, lightness-darkness, visible-invisible, conscious-unconscious, male-female, body-mind).

Since the end of the 1990s, Kapoor has produced a number of large works, including Taratantara (1999), a 35 metre-tall piece installed in the Baltic Flour Mills in Gateshead, England, before renovation began there, and Marsyas (2002), a large work of steel and PVC (polyvinyl chloride) installed in the Turbine Hall of Tate Modern. In 2000, one of Kapoor's works, Parabolic Waters, consisting of rapidly rotating coloured water, showed outside the Millennium Dome in London. In 2004, Cloud Gate, a 110-ton stainless steel piece, was unveiled at Millennium Park in Chicago.

Kapoor's sculpture, Cloud Gate, is involved in a debate over photography rights in public spaces, with the City of Chicago claiming photographs of the work infringe the artist's copyright.[1] (http://newurbanist.blogspot.com/2005/01/copyrighting-of-public-space.html) Soon to be completed are a memorial to the British victims of 9/11 in New York,[2] (http://www.britishmemorialgarden.org/design.html) and the design and construction of a subway station in Naples, Italy.[3] (http://www.interiordesign.net/index.asp?layout=preview&articleID=CA317909) Kapoor's recent work increasingly blurs the boundaries between architecture and art.

Kapoor represented Britain in the 1990 Venice Biennale, where he was awarded the Premio Duemila, and the following year he won the prestigeous Turner Prize. Solo exhibitions of Kapoor's work have been held in the Tate and Hayward Gallery in London, Kunsthalle Basel in Switzerland, Reina Sofia in Madrid, the National Gallery in Ottawa, and the CAPC Museum of Contemporary Art in Bordeaux.

External links

• Lisson Gallery. (http://www.lisson.co.uk/theArtists/Kapoor/anishkapoor.html) Description and images of Kapoor's work from his London-based gallery.
• Marsyas (http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/kapoor/) About Kapoor's 2003 installation piece in Tate Modern's Turbine Hall.
• Cloud Gate. (http://www.millenniumpark.org/) Images and description of Kapoor's public sculpture at Millennium Park, Chicago.
• Sky Mirror. (http://www.nottinghamplayhouse.co.uk/skymirror/) Website with images and articles on Kapoor's public sculpture in Nottingham, England.]
• Icon and Illusion. (http://www.artnet.com/magazine/contents/frontpage4-29-98.html) Article on the artist's work.
• Miscellaneous articles. (http://www.doononline.net/pages/info_features/features_spotlights/spotlights/akapoor/) Biography and collection of articles and links on Kapoor.sv:Anish Kapoor

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