Tony Cragg.
Born in Liverpool in 1949, he is regarded as one of the greatest interpreters of contemporary art. Educated in the fields of Minimalism and the Conceptual, after his early studies from ’69 to ’77 he attended Gloucestershire College of Art di Cheltenham, Wimbledon School of Art (BA) and the Royal College of Art (MA); in 1976 he taught at the Ecole des Beaux Arts de Metz. In ‘77 he moved to Wuppertal (Germany), where he has been living and working ever since. From ‘78 to 2001he taught at the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf – where he was made full professor in ’88 before going on to become director in 2009. At the same time he began to exhibit his works, taking his work to some of the most important museums and private and public collections in the world, including his participation in no less than six of the Venice Biennale (‘80, ’86 and ’88, when he received a “special mention” and won the “Turner Prize”, ’93, ’97 and 2009); twice in the Kassel “documenta” (’82 and ‘87), twice in the Sydney Biennale (‘84 and 90); he also exhibited his work at the Staatsgalerie Moderner Kunst in Munich Baveria and Palais des Beaux-Arts, in Brussels (’85), Brooklyn Museum and at the ’University Art Museum di Berkeley (’86); at the Houston Contemporary Art Museum and Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh (’91);’IVAM Valencia (’92); Musée des Beaux-Arts, Nantes (’94); Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid (95); MNAM, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (’96); MACBA, Barcelona (’97), Royal Academy, London (‘99), Tate Gallery, Liverpool (2000), Bibliothèque Nationale Francaise in Paris, CAC Málaga and at the MACRO in Rome (2003). In 2003 in Berlin he was awarded the prestigious Piepenbrock Prize for sculpture and in the same year was nominated Commander of the Order of the British Empire for art; in 2007 he received the Praemium Imperiale, once again for sculpture, awarded annually by the Japan Art Association to exponents of the art world. In Wuppertal he created a public park with his sculpture, where 20 of his large works are installed in 16 hectares of woods. During 2010 he exhibited at the Lisson Gallery in London, the Konstmuseum in Boras, the Sweden Uppsala Bror Hjorths Hus, (Sweden) and in a group exhibition at the Palazzo Ducale in Genoa.