Tony Cragg
Tony Cragg is one of the world’s foremost sculptors. Constantly pushing to find new relations between people and the material world, there is no limit to the materials he might use, as there are no limits to the ideas or forms he might conceive. His early, stacked works present a taxonomical understanding of the world, and he has said that he sees manmade objects as “fossilized keys to a past time which is our present”. So too, the floor and wall arrangements of objects that he started making in the 1980s blur the line between manmade and natural landscapes: they create an outline of something familiar, where the contributing parts relate to the whole. Cragg understands sculpture as a study of how material and material forms affect and form our ideas and emotions. This is exemplified in the way in which Cragg has worked and reworked two broad bodies of work he calls Early Forms and Rational Beings. The Early Forms explore the possibilities of sculpturally reforming familiar objects such as containers into new and unfamiliar forms producing new emotional responses, relationships and meanings. Rational Beings examine the relationship between two apparently different aesthetic descriptions of the world; the rational, mathematically based formal constructions that go to build up the most complicated of organic forms that we respond to emotionally. The human figure being the prime example of something that looks ultimately organic eliciting emotional responses, while being fundamentally an extremely complicated geometric composition of molecules, cells, organs and processes. His work does not imitate nature and what we look like, rather it concerns itself with why we look like we do and why we are as we are.
Tony Cragg was born in Liverpool, UK in 1949 and has lived and worked in Wuppertal, Germany since 1977. He has a BA from Wimbledon School of Art, London, UK (1973) and an MA from the Royal College of Art, London, UK (1977). Among many major solo shows he has exhibited at Castle Howard, York, UK (2024); Kunstpalast Dusseldorf, Germany (2024); Albertina Museum, Vienna, Austria (2022); Houghton Hall, Norfolk, UK (2021); Schloss Museum Wolfenbüttel, Wolfenbüttel, Germany (2020); Istanbul Modern, Istanbul, Turkey (2018); Yorkshire Sculpture Park, UK (2017); the National Museum of Havana, Cuba (2017); MUDAM Luxembourg, Luxembourg (2017); Ludwig Museum, Koblenz, Germany (2017); Wroclaw Contemporary Art Museum, Wroclaw, Poland (2017); The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg, Russia (2016; Von der Heydt Museum, Wuppertal, Germany (2016); Benaki Museum, Athens, Greece (2015); Gothenburg International Sculpture Exhibition, Gothenburg, Sweden (2015); Heydar Aliyev Centre, Baku, Azerbaijan (2014); Musée d’art modern de Saint-Étienne, Saint-Étienne, France (2014); National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, Taichung, Taiwan (2013); CAFA Museum in Beijing, China (2012); Musée du Louvre, Paris, France (2011); the Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh, UK (2011); Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, TX, USA (2011); Skulpturenpark Waldfrieden, Wuppertal, Germany (2010); Tate Gallery, Liverpool, UK (2000); Museo Nacional Centro de Arte, Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain (1995), Stedelijk van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, The Netherlands (1991) and Tate Gallery, London, UK (1988). He represented Britain at the 43rd Venice Biennale in 1988 and in the same year was awarded the Turner Prize at the Tate Gallery, London, UK. He has been a Professor at Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux Arts, Paris, France (1999-2009) and Professor at Kunstakademie, Dusseldorf, Germany (2009–present). He was elected a Royal Academician in 1994; received the Praemium Imperiale for Sculpture, Tokyo, Japan (2007); was Awarded the 1st Class Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (2012) and was made a Knight's Bachelor in 2016.
Recent, current and forthcoming projects
'Tony Cragg at Castle Howard', Castle Howard, York, UK (3 May - 22 September, 2024)
'Tony Cragg: Please touch!', Kunstpalast Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, Germany (22 February - 26 May 2024)
Museum Exhibitions
Exhibitions
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Selected Works in Seoul
2 September – 10 September 2023
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Tony Cragg: Riot
14 March – 15 April 2023
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Tony Cragg: New Sculptures
6 November 2021 – 15 January 2022
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Selected works in London
8 December 2020 – 12 January 2021
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Tony Cragg: Stacks
20 November 2019 – 29 February 2020
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Tony Cragg
1 October – 5 November 2016
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Tony Cragg
29 May – 18 September 2015
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Tony Cragg
28 November 2012 – 12 January 2013
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Tony Cragg
17 March – 17 April 2010
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Tony Cragg: Sculptures
17 May – 24 June 2006
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Tony Cragg: Sculptures
26 October – 21 December 2001
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Tony Cragg: New Works
2 December 1998 – 6 February 1999
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Tony Cragg
5 December 1992 – 30 January 1993
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Tony Cragg: New Sculpture
28 June – 3 August 1991
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Tony Cragg
2 December 1988 – 28 January 1989
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Tony Cragg: Recent Works 1984-1985
20 March – 20 April 1985
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Tony Cragg
2 December – 24 December 1982
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Tony Cragg
16 July – 9 August 1980
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Tony Cragg
28 February – 16 March 1979