Anish Kapoor is an Indian-born British sculptor known for his use of abstract biomorphic forms and his penchant for rich colors and polished surfaces. He is also the first living artist to be given a solo show at the Royal Academy of Arts in London.
Background
Ethnicity:
Father was Indian while his mother was Jewish Iraqi from Baghdad.
Anish Kapoor was born in 1954, in Mumbai, India. His mother was the Iraqi-Jewish daughter of a rabbi who immigrated to India from Baghdad with her family when she was an infant. His Hindu father was a hydrographer for the Indian Navy, who spent much of Kapoor's childhood on the ocean collecting data and charting marine navigation.
Because of this exclusive education, combined with the diversity and forward thinking within his own family, Kapoor spent his childhood feeling like an outsider unsure of his identity within Indian society. In his late teens, his sense of not belonging developed into deep internal turmoil. As result, Kapoor spent the next 15 years in psychoanalytical therapy, acquiring the tools needed to cope with his imbalance.
Education
Both of his parents were very modern and cosmopolitan, and sent Anish and his younger brother, IIan, to the prestigious Doon School, an all-boys boarding school in Dehra Dun. There the boys learned equally as much European history as they did knowledge about India. After attending Chelsea School of Art for postgraduate studies, Kapoor quit after one year.
As a child, Kapoor enjoyed finishing his mother's paintings, but he had no intention of becoming an artist. At age 17, he and his brother used free plane tickets to go to Israel and live and work at a kibbutz in Gan Shmuel. Kapoor fully embraced the kibbutz's communal living and utopian ideas of making a difference in the world. The experience was one of great liberation for Kapoor, and he intended to stay in Israel to study to become an engineer.
However, after three years and the realization that he wasn't particularly good at mathematics, Kapoor began to think seriously about becoming an artist. Determined to make a new career path for himself, he hitchhiked across Europe, finally settling in London in 1973. Once settled in the UK he realized that he was doing something he really loved. His mentor, British-Romanian sculptor, Paul Neagu encouraged Kapoor to pursue Performance art, and his guidance influenced Kapoor's approach to sculpture.
Unsure where his art career would lead, he traveled back to India. His trip to India inspired a three-year period of creativity and lead to the creation of his first major works - his ritualistic pigment sculptures. Because of the material, people initially thought Kapoor was a female artist. In spite of this confusion, he quickly gained recognition within the international art community.
Nicholas Logsdail, the owner of Lisson Gallery in London soon took notice of Kapoor's work. During the early 1980s, Logsdail was gathering together a diverse selection of British sculptors, to later become known as the New British Sculptors, and he wanted Kapoor to be part of the group. With his reputation as a serious artist now secure, Kapoor represented Britain in the 1990 Venice Biennale, and won the prestigious Turner Prize in 1991.
Kapoor found affinity in his use of traditional earthy materials and tendencies towards spiritual expression, with Logsdail's vision of the New British Sculptors. The loosely formed group included Julian Opie, Antony Gormley, Richard Deacon, Tony Cragg, and Rachel Whiteread, and provided a network of equals with whom Kapoor could exhibit and share ideas.
At the same time Kapoor found artistic success, he also found personal fulfillment. Crediting psychoanalysis with allowing him to explore his inner mind and process, Kapoor attributes the therapy to a better understanding of his art. From the mid-90s onwards he expanded his use of materials to include polished stainless steel, and then later red wax, and water. More recently, in last two decades, the artist's works are often colossal and site-specific.
Due to Kapoor's large-scale sculptures and numerous public commissions he has become extremely wealthy. He is well known and outspoken on the international art scene. For example, when conceptual artist and activist, Ai Weiwei was imprisoned by the Chinese government for creating subversive work, Kapoor took to social media to protest the unjust treatment of his friend. Embracing the limelight the protest brought with it, Kapoor even starred and danced in a "Gangnam for Freedom" music video along with other notable art world professionals.
In 2014, Kapoor obtained the exclusive rights to Vantablack, making him the only person in the world who could paint using this extremely deep shade of black. The concept of exclusivity surrounding a color seemed ridiculous and caused outrage amongst artists. In retaliation, contemporary British artist, Stuart Semple created the "world's pinkest pink" and banned Kapoor from using it. And while he allows others to use the pigment, they must first agree to a legal declaration stating they are not Kapoor. Further escalating the feud, Kapoor posted a picture on social media of his middle finger dipped in the pink pigment and included the caption: "Up yours #pink." Of course, despite these public escapades, Kapoor continues to produce work at a prolific rate, working from his studio in his home city of London.
Many of Kapoor's sculptures appear intensely weighty both in material and in meaning and thus share little of the Post-Minimalist one sighted exploration of material. Furthermore, unlike the Young British Artists who took the art world by storm during the 1990s with their immediately shocking art, Kapoor preferred a gentler approach - enticing his audience with less scandalous but still arresting forms.
Anish Kapoor transformed the cool, conceptual, and minimal approach to sculpture by adding lyricism, metaphor, and the heat of the primordial. Objects spill out from their own parameters suggesting an excess of emotion, yet they also stand serenely as in meditative focus for ritual. Typically, the sculptures appear abstract, with Kapoor's intention to promote self-reflection made most obvious when using mirrored surfaces. He does not wish to present a prescriptive idea, but instead to create an environment within which people themselves can consider meaning.
As the viewer becomes part of the sculpture, each work speaks of the confined individuality of a single body, but also of the expansive inclusiveness of a shared place. At once celestial and earthy, art by Kapoor evokes untouchable far away planets alongside the soft warmth of a close pregnant belly. His sculptures paradoxically entwine esoteric philosophy with sensual everyday experience.
Kapoor repeatedly returns to the notion of origin. Although not explicit, the beginning of life is constantly referenced. Kapoor makes holes, often vulva-like, and curves to illustrate pregnancy, as the journey towards birth from our mother's womb is highlighted. Red becomes the color of blood, the body, and the initiation of life's journey.
Kapoor gives the world a way to speak without words; like the ancient cave painters and the Egyptian's before them, artists recognize that there is a way to communicate in which everyone can understand. Kapoor builds a pictorial language of symbols that translates across cultures and time.
Quotations:
“That's what I am interested in: the void, the moment when it isn't a hole. It is a space full of what isn't there."
Personality
Quotes from others about the person
Kapoor has paid homage to Minimalism's faith in weightless volumes, abstraction, specific materials, saturated color and simplicity of form, while also exploring different materials' capacities for visual illusion, the biggest of Minimalism's no-nos.
Interests
Kapoor's interest in infinity, void, and endlessness is as much an interest in carving out space to consider meaning, as it is a reflection on the state of no-thing-ness, and a clearing of the mind.
Artists
Paul Neagu
Connections
In 1995, Anish married the German-born art historian, Susanne Spicale, while also finally resolving his psychological issues. They have a daughter Alba and a son Ishan. They separated and divorced in 2013. Kapoor has since been in a relationship with his former assistant and garden designer Sophie Walker and the two married in 2016.