Ben Uri Research Unit

for the study and digital recording of the Jewish, Refugee and wide Immigrant contribution to British visual culture since 1900.


Anish Kapoor artist

Anish Kapoor was born to a Jewish mother and an Indian Punjabi Hindu father in Bombay (now, Mumbai), India in 1954. He immigrated to England in 1973, attending Hornsey College of Art (BA) and Chelsea School of Art and Design (MA), rising to fame in the 1980s with his geometric and biomorphic sculptures. He has pioneered installation and conceptual art, often in the public domain, working across an unprecedented range of scale, engineering complexity and materials, including granite, limestone, marble, pigment, reflective surfaces, red wax and vantablack. He was awarded the prestigious Turner Prize (1991), was made CBE for services to the Arts in 2003 and in 2009 became the first living artist to have a solo exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts, London.

Born: 1954 Bombay (now Mumbai), India

Year of Migration to the UK: 1973

Other name/s: Anish Kapoor CBE RA, Sir Anish Kapoor, Anish Mikhail Kapoor


Biography

Sculptor Anish Kapoor was born in Bombay (now Mumbai), India on 12 March 1954 to a Jewish mother and an Indian Punjabi Hindu father, a hydrographer and applied physicist who served in the Indian Navy. Kapoor attended The Doon School, an all-boys boarding school in Dehradun, in Uttar Pradesh, India. In 1971, he moved to Israel with one of his two brothers, where he briefly studied electrical engineering. In 1973 he immigrated to England, settling in London. He studied at Hornsey College of Art (1973–77) and at Chelsea School of Art (1977–78), where he was mentored by Romanian sculptor Paul Neagu, who taught Kapoor to employ symbology in sculpting to express philosophical ideas. Kapoor left after a year and, unsure where his art career would lead, he travelled back to India, before returning to England. He recalled ‘I suddenly realised all these things I had been making at art school and in my studio had a relationship to what I saw in India’ (The Guardian). The influence of India was reflected in his saturated pigments and striking architectural forms in works including the 1000 Names series (1979), comprising ‘arrangements of abstract geometric forms coated with loose powdered pigments that spilled beyond the object itself and onto the floor and wall’ (Britannica).

Later that year, he started teaching at Wolverhampton Polytechnic. During the 1980s, Kapoor became known for his biomorphic sculptures and installations made with materials including aluminium, granite, marble pigment and resin. He held his first solo exhibition at Patrice Alexandre, Paris, France in 1980. Shortly afterwards, he was selected to represent Britain, along with Stephen Farthing and Bill Woodrow, in the Paris Biennale (1982). In the same year he became Artist in Residence at the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool and had the first of many solo exhibitions at Lisson Gallery, London NW8. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, he began exploring matter and non-matter, his designs using negative space and diverse materials to create the illusion that they were distorting the space around them or fading into the distance. These included concave or convex mirrors whose reflections attracted and swallowed the viewer, or forms carved in stone and pigmented so as to disappear. According to Kapoor, ‘That’s what I’m interested in: the void, the moment when it isn’t a hole. It is a space full of what isn’t there’ (The Guardian). His interest in negative spaces evoked emptiness in both free-standing sculptural works and large installations including Void Field (1989), ‘a grid of rough sandstone blocks each with a mysterious black hole penetrating its top surface’, exhibited at the 44th Venice Biennale, where he again represented Britain in 1990 and was awarded the Premio Duemila for Best Young Artist.

In the 1980s and early 1990s, he also created a body of two-dimensional works with intensely saturated colour (principally, reds, yellows and blues), which has become a signature in his work, addressing dualities of space and light. When I am Pregnant (1992, National Museum Oslo), only subtly protruding when seen from side profile, was a key example of his transition from floor-based sculptures to architectural exploration. He has also experimented with the use of red wax/flesh-like colour to evoke flesh, blood and transfiguration, as in Taratantara (1999, BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art) and Marsyas (2002–03, Tate Modern). The latter comprised three steel rings joined together by a single span of PVC membrane, which Kapoor described as being ‘rather like a flayed skin' (Tate). The title referred to Marsyas, a satyr in Greek mythology, who was flayed alive by the god Apollo. In 1991, Kapoor was awarded the prestigious Turner Prize and, in 1999, was elected a Royal Academician. In 2003 he was made a CBE and, in 2009, became the first living artist to have a solo exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts. He has honorary fellowships from the University of Wolverhampton (1999) and the Royal Institute of British Architecture (2001) and an honorary doctorate from the University of Oxford (2014). His notable large-scale public installation Sky Mirror, a 35-foot-diameter concave mirror made of polished stainless steel, was exhibited globally in numerous iterations, including the Rockefeller Center, New York (2006), Kensington Gardens, London (2010–11), Versailles, France (2015), Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg (2010), and Houghton Hall, Norfolk, which hosted Kapoor’s largest outdoor exhibition to date in the UK in 2020. He also designed ArcelorMittal Orbit (2012), with Cecil Balmond, London’s highest sculpture and observation desk in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, and Ark Nova (2013), the world's first inflatable concert hall in Japan. Kapoor’s work is held in UK public collections including the Arts Council, British Council, and Government Art Collection. He currently lives and works in London. His work was included in Ben Uri's online survey exhibition Midnight's Family: 70 Years of Indian Artists in Britain (2020).

Related books

  • Gallerie dell' Accademia di Venezia, Anish Kapoor (Venezia: Marsilio, 2022)
  • Viktor Misiano, Anish Kapoor and Nicholas Baume, Homi Bhaba, Eckhard Schneider, Gayatri Spivak, Nancy Adajania, Ángela Molina, Burghart Schmidt, Marcus du Sautoy, 'My Red Homeland' (Moscow: Jewish Museum and Tolerance Centre, 2015)
  • Aasia Wahid, ‘Art of Anish Kapoor: An Analytical Study’ (Aligarh: Aligarh Muslim University, 2015)
  • Norman Rosenthal, Horst Bredekamp, Barbara Segelken, Symphony for a Beloved Sun (Cologne: Walther Koenig Books, 2013)
  • In the shadow of the tree an the knot of the earth. Exhibition catalogue (London: Lisson Gallery, 2012)
  • Anish Kapoor, Greg Hilty, Andrea Rose, Anish Kapoor (London: British Council, 2011)
  • Anish Kapoor: Sketchbook (Paris: Editions Dilecta, 2011)
  • Anish Kapoor, Michael Bracewell, Andrew Renton, Anish Kapoor: Flashback (London: Hayward, 2011)
  • Richard Levider ed., I have nothing to say / Je n’ai rien à dire. Interviews with Anish Kapoor / Entretiens avec Anish Kapoor (Paris: RMN Grandpalais, 2011)
  • Homi K. Bhabha, Jean de Loisy and Norman Rosenthal, Anish Kapoor (London: Royal Academy of Arts, 2009)
  • David Anfam, Johanna Burton, Richard Deacon, Donna M De Salvo, Anish Kapoor (London: Phaidon, 2009)
  • Charlotte Higgins, 'A life in Art: Anish Kapoor', The Guardian, 8 November 2008, pp. 12-13
  • Anish Kapoor in Architecture (London: RIBA Trust and Deutsche Bank, 2008)
  • Anish Kapoor, Anthony Vider, Barbara Gladstone Gallery, Anish Kapoor: Whiteout (Milano: Charta, 2004)
  • Donna de Salvo, Cecil Balmond, Anish Kapoor: Marsyas (London: Tate Publishing, 2002)
  • Homi K. Bhabha, Pier Luigi Tazzi, Anish Kapoor (Hayward Gallery, London and University of California Press, 1998)
  • Germano Celant, Anish Kapoor (Milano: Charta, 1998)
  • Anish Kapoor, Germano Celant, Anish Kapoor (London: Thames and Hudson, 1996)
  • Lynda Forsha, Anish Kapoor, Pier Luigi Tazzi (San Diego: Museum of Contemporary Art, 1992)
  • Sean Rainbird, The Turner Prize 1991 (London: Tate Publishing, 1991)
  • Jeremy Lewison, Anish Kapoor: Drawings (London: Tate Publishing, 1990)
  • Marco Livingstone, Anish Kapoor : feeling into form = le sentiment de la forme, la forme du sentiment (Liverpool: Walker Art Gallery / Lyon: Le Nouveau Musee, 1983)
  • Waldemar Januszczak, 'Anish Kapoor', The Guardian, 27 May 1982, p. 12

Public collections

Related organisations

  • Chelsea School of Art (student)
  • Hornsey College of Art (student)
  • London Institute and Leeds University (honorary doctorate)
  • Oxford University (honorary doctorate)
  • Royal Academy of Arts (Royal Academician)
  • Royal Institute of British Architects (honorary doctorate)
  • The Doon School, Dehradun, India (student)
  • University of Wolverhampton (honorary doctorate)
  • Walker Art Gallery (artist in residence)
  • Wolverhampton Polytechnic (teacher)

Related web links

Selected exhibitions

  • Anish Kapoor: Painting, Museum of Modern Art Oxford (2022)
  • Anish Kapoor, Houghton Hall, Norfolk, England (2020)
  • Anish Kapoor, Pitzhanger Manor & Gallery, London (2019)
  • Anish Kapoor, Lisson Gallery, London (2017, 2016, 2015, 2012, 2006, 2003)
  • Anish Kapoor: Flashback, Manchester Art Gallery, Manchester (2010)
  • Turning the World Upside Down: Anish Kapoor in Kensington Gardens, London (2010)
  • Anish Kapoor, Royal Academy of Arts (2009)
  • Place/ No Place: Anish Kapoor in Architecture, Royal Institute of British Architecture (2008)
  • Anish Kapoor: Marsyas, Unilever Commission for the Turbine Hall, Tate Modern, London (2002)
  • Taratantara, Anish Kapoor, Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, England (1999)
  • Anish Kapoor, Hayward Gallery, London (1998)
  • Anish Kapoor: White Sand, Red Millet, Many Flowers, Spotlight (London: South Bank Centre, 1993)
  • Anish Kapoor, London: Visual Arts Dept of the British Council, 1990)
  • Anish Kapoor: Drawings, Tate Gallery, London (1990)
  • Void Field, Lisson Gallery, London (1989)
  • Anish Kapoor, Belfast: Arts Council Gallery (1985)
  • Feeling into Form, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool (1983)
  • India: Myth and Reality, Museum of Modern Art, Oxford (1982)
  • Red in the Centre, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool (1982)
  • Anish Kapoor, Coracle Press, London (1981)
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Ben Uri archive

Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Anish Kapoor]

Ben Uri library

Publications related to [Anish Kapoor] in the Ben Uri Library