21.03.2025 – 29.06.2025
Jenny Saville is one of the most important representatives of the Young British Artists and was the only figurative painter to take part in the legendary Sensation exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts in London in 1997. Over more than three decades, Saville has explored the centuries-old tradition of body painting in her oeuvre, with her figures occupying an ambiguous position between idealisation and deconstruction. She draws inspiration from art history – from old masters such as Leonardo and Raphael to Egon Schiele, Picasso, Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud – to create a painting characterised by physicality, carnality and the interplay of new and old media. Saville translates the techniques of the old masters into an original, contemporary approach that between figuration and abstraction. In doing so, she develops her figurative figurative representations, comparable to a sculptor, mostly from abstract colour fields and thick layers of colour that gradually take shape. Ancient or Christian iconographies serve her as a model for her exploration of composition and space-figure-surface arrangements.
Jenny Saville – Gaze
21.03.2025 – 29.06.2025
Albertina
Albertinaplatz 1, 1010 Vienna
www.albertina.at
