36 Facts About Anish Kapoor

1.

In 2017, Anish Kapoor designed the statuette for the 2018 Brit Awards.

2.

Anish Kapoor has received several distinctions and prizes, such as the Premio Duemila Prize at the XLIV Venice Biennale in 1990, the Turner Prize in 1991, the Unilever Commission for the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern, the Padma Bhushan by the Indian government in 2012, a knighthood in the 2013 Birthday Honours for services to visual arts, an honorary doctorate degree from the University of Oxford in 2014.

3.

Anish Mikhail Kapoor was born in Mumbai, India, to an Iraqi Jewish mother and an Indian Punjabi Hindu father.

4.

Anish Kapoor's father was a hydrographer and applied physicist who served in the Indian Navy.

5.

Anish Kapoor is the brother of Ilan Anish Kapoor, a professor at York University, Toronto, Canada.

6.

Anish Kapoor attended The Doon School, an all-boys boarding school in Dehradun, India.

7.

Anish Kapoor began to study electrical engineering, but had trouble with mathematics and quit after six months.

8.

Anish Kapoor went on to teach at Wolverhampton Polytechnic in 1979 and in 1982 was Artist in Residence at the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool.

9.

Anish Kapoor has lived and worked in London since the early 1970s.

10.

Anish Kapoor became known in the 1980s for his geometric or biomorphic sculptures using simple materials such as granite, limestone, marble, pigment and plaster.

11.

Anish Kapoor produced a number of large works, including Taratantara, a 35-metre-high piece which was installed in the Baltic Flour Mills in Gateshead, England, prior to the renovation beginning there which turned the structure into the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art; and Marsyas, a large work consisting of three steel rings joined by a single span of PVC membrane that reached end to end of the 3,400-square-foot Turbine Hall of Tate Modern.

12.

In 2008, Anish Kapoor created Memory in Berlin and New York for the Guggenheim Foundation, his first piece in Cor-Ten, which is formulated to produce a protective coating of rust.

13.

In 2009, Anish Kapoor became the first Guest Artistic Director of Brighton Festival.

14.

Anish Kapoor installed four sculptures during the festival: Sky Mirror at Brighton Pavilion gardens; C-Curve at The Chattri, Blood Relations ; and 1000 Names, both at the Fabrica Gallery.

15.

Anish Kapoor created a large site-specific work titled The Dismemberment of Jeanne d'Arc and a performance-based installation: Imagined Monochrome.

16.

In September 2009, Anish Kapoor was the first living artist to have a solo exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts.

17.

In 2011, Anish Kapoor exhibited Dirty Corner at the Fabbrica del Vapore in Milan.

18.

Anish Kapoor sued the National Rifle Association of America in 2018.

19.

Anish Kapoor reported that the settlement included the removal of his work from the NRA's film, saying "They have now complied with our demand to remove the unauthorized image of my sculpture Cloud Gate from their abhorrent video, which seeks to promote fear, hostility, and division in American society".

20.

Anish Kapoor's work, Cinema di Terra, is a 45m long, 3m wide and 7m deep cut into the landscape made from concrete and earth.

21.

Anish Kapoor was commissioned by Tees Valley Regeneration to produce five pieces of public art, collectively known as the Tees Valley Giants.

22.

Anish Kapoor says this body of work is neither pure sculpture nor pure architecture.

23.

Anish Kapoor has designed stage sets including for; the opera Idomeneo at Glyndebourne in 2003; Pelleas et Melisande, La Monnaie in Brussels, and a dance-theatre piece called in-i with Akram Khan and Juliette Binoche at the National Theatre in London.

24.

The Anish Kapoor Foundation was founded as a charity in 2017, registered in London.

25.

In 2014 Anish Kapoor began working with Vantablack, a substance thought to be one of the least reflective substances known.

26.

Anish Kapoor later stated that the move was itself intended as something like performance art and that he did not anticipate the amount of attention it received.

27.

In December 2016, Anish Kapoor obtained the pigment and posted an image on Instagram of his extended middle finger which had been dipped in Semple's pink.

28.

Anish Kapoor initially began exhibiting as part of New British Sculpture art scene, along with fellow British sculptors Tony Cragg and Richard Deacon.

29.

Anish Kapoor achieved widespread recognition when he represented Britain at the 1990 Venice Biennale, and recounts the experience in Sarah Thornton's Seven Days in the Art World.

30.

In 1992 Anish Kapoor contributed to documenta IX with Building Descent into Limbo.

31.

Anish Kapoor was the first living British artist to take over the Royal Academy, London, in 2009; the show attracted 275,000 visitors, rendering it at the time the most successful exhibition ever by a living artist held in London.

32.

In 2011 Anish Kapoor had a solo touring exhibition with the Arts Council, part of their "Flashback " series of shows.

33.

Anish Kapoor had a major exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney from December 2012 to April 2013 as part of the Sydney International Art Series.

34.

In 2020 Anish Kapoor unveiled a new exhibition at the grounds of Houghton Hall in Norfolk.

35.

Anish Kapoor's work is collected worldwide, notably by the Museum of Modern Art in New York City; Tate Modern in London; Fondazione Prada in Milan; the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; the Guggenheim in Bilbao; De Pont Museum of Contemporary Art in Tilburg, the Netherlands; the Moderna Museet, Stockholm; the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa, Japan; and the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.

36.

In 1995, Anish Kapoor married German-born medieval art historian Susanne Spicale.