Jenny Saville - (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

This volume spans Saville's illustrious career, showcasing sixty paintings and drawings, many of which have not previously been displayed in public.

Jenny Saville, an original member of the acclaimed Young British Artists, is one of today's leading painters. Her large-scale portraits and nudes challenge accepted ideals of beauty and celebrate the human form. Published to coincide with a major international exhibition, this handsome retrospective is designed to be accessible and appeal to a broad audience.

In-depth essays evaluate Saville's development of her technique, marking key moments and her strong connections to art history and the influence of forerunners including Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Titian, Velázquez, Van Dyck, and Rembrandt, as well as twentieth-century artists Picasso, De Kooning, Bacon, Freud, and Auerbach.

Spanning the full spectrum of her career, this volume includes around sixty paintings and drawings, many on a monumental scale, as well as many that have never previously been published.

Review Quotes

"In 1995, Jenny Saville's self portrait was the star piece of Saatchi Gallery's Young British Artists III, propelling her to fame shortly after her graduation from the Glasgow School of Art. The fleshy, confrontational nude also signaled a comeback of figurative painting. Saville studies medical illustrations and has watched plastic surgery operations in New York to understand the flesh, before rendering its forms with Bacon's visceral intensity and de Kooning's frenetic abstraction. This retrospective, her largest museum show to date, spans over forty years with new portraits verging on abstraction" -- THE GRAND TOURIST

About the Author

John Elderfield is a curator and historian. Previously, he was chief curator of painting and sculpture at MoMA, as well as curator at the Princeton University Art Museum. Sarah Howgate is senior curator of contemporary collections at the National Portrait Gallery, London. Roxane Gay is a contributing opinion writer at The New York Times and best-selling author. Andrea Karnes is chief curator of the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas. Emanuele Coccia is an instructor at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris. Nicholas Cullinan is the former director of the National Portrait Gallery, London.