PAINTINGS
Kapoor, Anish
India / Great Britain (1954 - )
Untitled
1988
Gouache and pigment on paper
22 x 16 1/2 in. (55.88 x 41.91 cm) sheet size
Gift of William and Ruth True
FA 2002.61

Anish Kapoor is known for his enormous, towering, brilliantly colored sculptures. Kapoor’s paintings and drawings explore and blur the border between painting and sculpture. His themes of emptiness, absence, and transformation are apparent in this Untitled piece, as is his fascination with strong, pure colors such as the yellow that appears to emerge from the darkness of the brown background.

Anish Kapoor made a huge impact on the young British artist scene in the 1980s with the use of powdered colors, which completely covered and defined his sculptural shapes. Since his first sculptures—simple forms covered with colored pigments and arranged on the floor—Kapoor has developed a multi-faceted body of works using such diverse materials as paper, stone, steel, and glass. His way of working is typical of the sculptor, but his themes—emptiness, absence, transformation and immateriality—derive from painting. -- Label copy for 150 Works of Art, October 1, 2005 to February 26, 2006.