International Art News

Atonement Studies: Central Panel, 2005-2006 Oil on watercolor paper 99 x 72 3/4 in. (251.5 x 185 cm) Private Collection

From November 30, 2011 to March 4, 2012 – Norton Museum of Art
The paintings of the human figure by British artist Jenny Saville (b.1970) have been infrequently exhibited since first premiered in the late 1990s.  Included in the 1997 exhibition of the collection of British marketing giant Charles Saatchi entitled Sensation, she did not earn the notoriety of her slightly older peers, “the young British artists” for unusual materials.  Instead, Saville masterfully painted with oil on canvas and concentrated on the human figure but still created provocative work.  Her monumental compositions of the female form were unromantic and suggested the reality of weight, flesh and blood.  Initially restricted to a feminist critique Saville’s skill and compositions have evolved.   She continues to paint luscious canvases that reveal that her subject has always been the medium of painting itself. Taking on the challenge of the history of modern painting through the tradition of classical figure painting her contribution is the subject of this exhibition.

This selective exhibition of 25 canvases and drawings dating from 1999 – 2011 will bring Saville’s mature work together for the first time.  Included will be such recognizable works as Fulcrum (1999) and  Reverse (2002-3) as well as examples showcasing Saville’s exceptional draughtsmanship in key works from the recent series Reproduction drawing (after the Leonardo cartoon),(2009-10) which references the iconic image found in the collection of London’s National Gallery. Works from the artist’s studio which have not been previously exhibited also will be included.

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JENNY SAVILLE Red Stare Head IV, 2006-2011 Oil on canvas 99 3/16 x 73 13/16 inches (252 x 187.5 cm) © Jenny Saville 2011. Courtesy of Gagosian Gallery Photo by Mike Bruce

From September 15 to Saturday, October 22, 2011- Gagosian Gallery – Madison Avenue
Fascinated by the endless aesthetic and formal possibilities that the materiality of the human body offers, Saville remits a highly sensuous and tactile impression of surface and mass in her monumental oil paintings. In the compelling Stare paintings she renders the contours and features of the face and the nuances of skin texture and color in strokes both bold and meticulous. Enlarging the facial features of her human subjects to a vast scale and rendering them in layer upon layer of paint, she imbues in them with a sense of mass and weight that is almost sculptural and at times wholly abstract. Intense pinks, reds, and blues erupt through pale skin tones, disclosing the internal workings of the painting like the flesh and blood of a living organism.

Saville portrays the intimate relationship between mother and child in a series of life-sized drawings directly inspired by Renaissance nativity portraits — in particular Leonardo da Vinci’s cartoon The Virgin and Child with St. Anne and John the Baptist, an atypical scene in which the Virgin contends with a lively Christ-child. In Study for Pentimenti IV (After Michelangelo’s Virgin and Child) (2011), and Componimento inculto (2011), the subjects – a pregnant woman and young child– are recorded in symbiotic flux. Multiple impressions of each figure are drawn, erased, and superimposed again to create studies in simultaneity; the relationship between them is expressed in a series of dynamic poses rather than in static compositions of iconographic order. Through these intricate studies, Saville gives powerful graphic life to the anatomical details and expressive movements that animate and underpin her visceral paintings.

Jenny Saville was born in Cambridge, England in 1970. She studied at the Glasgow School of Art. Her work has been included in exhibitions worldwide including “Sensation: Young British Artists from the Saatchi Collection,” Royal Academy of Arts, London (1997, traveled to Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin and the Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York 1998-1999); “The Nude In 20th Century Art,” Kunsthalle Emden, Germany (2002, traveled to Arken Museum of Modern Art, Copenhagen in 2003); “Painting,” Museo Correr, 50th Biennale di Venezia (2003); “Paint Made Flesh,” Frist Center for the Arts, Nashville (2009, traveled to the Phillips Collection, Washington, DC and Memorial Art Gallery, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY in 2010) and “Eroi,” Galleria d’Arte Moderna, Torino, Italy (2011). Her work was the subject of a solo exhibition at the Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Rome in 2005. Her first solo U.S. museum exhibition will open at the Norton Museum in West Palm Beach, Florida later this year.

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