Artist of the day

Wednesday, July 19, 2017

Artist of the day, July 19: Anish Kapoor,
Indian-British sculptor

Sir Anish Kapoor, (1954) is a Indian-British sculptor.
Born in Bombay (Mumbai) Kapoor has lived and worked in
London since the early 1970s when he moved to
study art, first at the Hornsey College of Art and
later at the Chelsea School of Art and Design.

He represented Britain in the XLIV Venice Biennale in 1990, when
he was awarded the Premio Duemila Prize. In 1991, he received
the Turner Prize and in 2002 received the Unilever Commission
for the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern. Notable public sculptures
include Cloud Gate (colloquially known as "the Bean") in Chicago's
Millennium Park; Sky Mirror, exhibited at the Rockefeller Center in
New York City in 2006 and Kensington Gardens in London in 2010;
Temenos, at Middlehaven, Middlesbrough; Leviathan, at the Grand Palais
in Paris in 2011; and ArcelorMittal Orbit, commissioned as a permanent
artwork for London's Olympic Park and completed in 2012.

Kapoor received a knighthood in the 2013 Birthday Honours for services
to visual arts. He was awarded an honorary doctorate degree from the
University of Oxford in 2014. In 2012, he was awarded the Padma
Bhushan by the Indian government which is India's third-highest
civilian award. An image of Kapoor features in the British cultural
icons section of the newly designed British passport in 2015.
In 2016, he was announced as a recipient of the LennonOno
Grant for Peace. In February 2017 Kapoor was announced as the
recipient of the USD $1 million Genesis Prize, which "recognises
individuals who have attained excellence and international renown
in their fields and whose actions and achievements express a
commitment to Jewish values, the Jewish community and the State of Israel”.