Born in 1954 in Bombay (now Mumbai), Anish Kapoor moved to London in the early 1970s. Educated in art at the Hornsey College of Art and at the Chelsea School of Art and Design, Kapoor also studied under Paul Neagu, a Romanian- born artist, who was instrumental in helping Kapoor articulate a cross-cultural artistic vision that has served him throughout his career. Kapoor first gained critical recognition in the early 1980s. Since the mid-90s, his work has become more ambitious in scale as he began to explore the notion of void through the creation of works that either seem to recede into the distance, disappear into walls or floors surfaces, or to destabilize assumptions about the physical world. By integrating his sculptures more fully within the surrounding environment, Kapoor’s work was shown in institutions throughout the world such as the Tate Modern in London and the Fabbrica del Vapore in Milan.
Increasingly blurring the boundaries between architecture, design and art, Kapoor has completed several commissioned public installations in the past two decades. In 2006, he received great critical acclaim for his work Cloud Gate, a permanent 110-ton sculpture of polished stainless steel created for Chicago’s millennium Park and for Sky Mirror, a 35-foot diameter concave mirror at the Rockefeller Center in New York.
Today, Kapoor has reached international status. Having received many international awards and honors – including the Premio Duemila at the Venice Biennale (representing Britain, 1990), the Turner Prize at the Tate Gallery, London (1991) and the Praemium Imperiale at the Japan Art Association (2011) – Kapoor has had a major exhibition of his work in the gardens of the Palace of Versailles (2015) and solo exhibitions at venues around the world, including the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (2008); Royal Academy of Arts, London (2009); National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi (2010); Guggenheim Museum Bilbao (2010); and the École national supérieure des beaux-arts de Paris (2011). Kapoor lives and works in London.