Cambridge University
Saint Martin’s School of Art
Born in 1934 in Tunisia, where his English father had started a trading company. Phillip King came to England in 1945. His parents were Thomas John and Gabrielle Clemence (Liautald) King. His mother was French and he was brought up in both languages.
After completing a degree in modern languages at Cambridge University, Phillip King went on to study sculpture at St. Martin’s College as a pupil of Anthony Caro, where he began making clay and plaster sculpture of a Brutalist-Surrealist type.
From 1958 to 1959 Phillip King worked as an assistant to Henry Moore. Phillip King’s early works of the fifties were generally small and made in clay and plaster, they were described as being of a robust Brutalist and Surrealist nature. In 1962, he started to use fibreglass and colour, and seminal works such as "Rosebud", "Genghis Khan", and "Twilight" brought King’s work to the attention of the art world in 1963. These gave way to large and small-scale abstract sculpture, which often combined various materials.
His first solo show was in 1964 at the Rowan Gallery, where he has since continued to exhibit and in 1968 he represented Britain with Bridget Riley at the Venice Biennale. Phillip established a major reputation in both group and solo shows nationally and internationally using a variety of materials from fibreglass and metal through to wood and slate.
Phillip King was a Trustee of the Tate Gallery from 1967 to 1969. He has taught at St. Martins School of Art, the Hochschule der Künste, Berlin, and at the Royal College of Art, London where he was made Professor Emeritus in 1990. He went on to be elected Professor of Sculpture at the Royal Academy Schools, London in 1990, a post which he held until his election as President of the Royal Academy in 1999.
In the late eighties, King turned to a more figurative way of working, before moving on to make large–scale ceramic vessels using a rough mix of clay and newspaper. During the nineties, King spent long periods working in Japan, learning to make ceramics on a very large scale. In later years, he returned to using colour in his work, covering solid forms with dry pigments and allowing them to drift, making free-formed shapes.
Over the course of his career King has worked in a variety of different media including ceramic, steel, plaster, wood, plastics, and PVC. King's larger constructivist forms have incorporated a sophisticated and highly personal use of colour and a poetic, even lyrical, use of form that belie their materials.
He has had several retrospective exhibitions, including one at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in 1968 and at the Hayward Gallery in 1981. More recently retrospectives of his work have been held at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park in 1997, and most significantly at Forte de Belvedere, Florence in 1997 as only the second English sculptor to be given this honour, the first being Henry Moore. King currently lives and works in London.
During 1999 - 2004 Phillip was the President of the Royal Academy in London, England.
Quotes from others about the person
King is the one sculptor of his generation prepared to jettison what he has proved himself good at in order to explore what cannot be programmed.
Phillip married Lilian Odelle in 1957 but the couple divorced in 1987. He had a son, Anthony, who unfortunately deceased.
