French, 20th – 21st century, female.
Born 31 May 1947, in the Haute-Garonne.
Painter (mixed media).
Abadie has lived and worked in Paris since 1985, after art and sculpture studies in Toulouse. She also studied fresco techniques in Venice. In Paris, she has exhibited at the Salon de la Jeune Peinture in ...
Polish, 20th century, female.
Born 1930, in Falenty.
Painter (mixed media), sculptor.
A student at the academy of fine art in Warsaw between 1950 and 1955, Magdalena Abakanowicz taught at the fine arts college in Poznan from 1965 onwards. Initially a painter, she later took up sculpture and also began working with textiles in ...
French, 20th – 21st century, female.
Active in France.
Born 11 August 1950, in New York.
Installation artist, photographer. Multimedia.
Art Narratif.
Aballéa studied epistemology. She lives and works in Paris. Aballéa's work stages natural phenomena and scientific descriptions entirely of her own invention, which she describes using writings in the form of tales. Her work generally involves an environment in which light has a predominant place: 'In my work, I like to tell stories. I tell them through space, image, situation and text. I don't believe in any defined limitation between the real and the unreal, but rather a large, fluctuating zone of possibilities. My works are situated in this large zone.' She willingly refers to Borgès and Lewis Carroll, provoking a mêlée between elements of reality and textual fiction. She often uses photographs re-touched with pastel colours which she accompanies with texts....
American, 20th – 21st century, female.
Born 28 August 1952, in Richmond Heights (Missouri).
Installation artist, video artist, photographer.
Kim Abeles was an American Field Service student in 1969 in Utsunomiya, Japan, where a Buddhist priest introduced her to traditional Japanese arts. She returned to the USA and studied painting at Ohio University, receiving a BFA in ...
(b Belgrade, Nov 30, 1946).
Serbian performance artist, video artist and installation artist. She attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Belgrade (1965–70) before completing her post-diploma studies at the Academy of Fine Arts, Zagreb, in 1972. Her early works included sound recordings installed on bridges, paintings of truck crashes, and experiments with conceptual photography (see Widrich, pp. 80–97). In her first significant performance, Rhythm 10 (1973), she repeatedly and rapidly stabbed the spaces between her fingers with various knives. Later, in Rhythm 0 (1974; see Ward, pp. 114–30), she invited gallery visitors to choose from 72 available objects to use on her body, as she stood unresponsive for 6 hours. Her infamous performance Thomas’ Lips (1975; see M. Abramović and others, pp. 98–105), in which she cut, flagellated, and froze herself, established her practice as one that dramatically explored the physical limits of the human body, as seen in the work of Gena Pane or Chris Burden (...
Venezuelan, 20th century, male.
Born 22 August 1918, in Turmero.
Painter, collage artist. Landscapes, animals.
Abreu studied at the school of fine arts in Caracas, where from 1936 he associated with Cesario Enriquez, Matteo Manaure and in particular with Alejandro Otero and Pascual Navarro, who were both to play an important role in Venezuelan abstract art. Lively discussions took place between the five of them about the possibilities of rejecting the academic instruction that they were receiving and taking up contemporaneous forms of expression while preserving a typically Venezuelan identity. Several members of the group studied in Paris, where they were influenced by abstract painting. From ...
Israeli, 20th century, male.
Active in France.
Born 1964, in Tel-Aviv; died 10 October 1993, in Paris.
Installation artist, environmental artist, video artist.
Absalon lived and worked in Paris, where he studied at the École des Beaux-Arts under Christian Boltanski.
Absalon produced maquettes for ‘Utopian’ furniture upholstered entirely and uniformly in aseptic white plastic. Totally impractical, his furniture simply represents a desire to mark a departure from everyday convention. There is a strong element of play in some of his work, as in ...
Israeli, 20th – 21st century, male.
Born 11 November 1961, in Umm el Fahm.
Painter (including mixed media), draughtsman. Military subjects, figures, still-lifes, animals.
Asim Abu-Shakra was educated at the college of fine arts in Tel Aviv, where he worked as a teacher in 1987 and ...
Italian, 20th century, male.
Born 22 August 1920, in Genoa.
Painter, sculptor (including bronze), engraver, designer, collage artist.
The son of Piedmontese parents, Enrico Accatino studied at the fine arts academy in Rome from 1942 to 1945, and was a pupil of Felice Casorati. In ...
American, 20th century, male.
Born 24 January 1940, in New York.
Painter, sculptor, performance artist, video artist. Multimedia.
Body Art, Conceptual Art.
Vito Acconci was born in the Bronx, New York and lives and works in Brooklyn. He studied at Holy Cross College in Worcester, Massachusetts and at the University of Iowa. He has taught in various art schools and universities and in particular at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Yale University and the Parsons School of Design in New York....
French, 20th century, male.
Born 1 August 1932, in the Var.
Engraver (mezzotint), draughtsman, mixed media.
Achard trained at the École des Beaux-Arts in Toulon and the Académie Charpentier in Paris. He holds an agrégation (a high-level professorial qualification) in fine arts. He is a teacher at the Lycée Thiers in Marseilles and shows his work in private exhibitions, including one at the Galerie L'Échoppe in Marseilles in ...
French, 20th – 21st century, male.
Born 1966, in Marseilles.
Installation artist, sculptor, action artist, photographer.
Conceptual Art.
Boris Achour, who was a graduate of the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, received a three-month extra-mural bursary from the Villa Médicis that he spent in Los Angeles in ...
British, 20th – 21st century, male.
Born 1947, in Isleworth (Middlesex); died 5 June 2014.
Sculptor, installation artist.
Process Art.
Roger Ackling was educated at St Martin's School of Art and Ealing College of Art, and held his first exhibition at the London College of Fashion Gallery. He teaches at Chelsea School of Art and Norwich School of Art and Design....
(b Contou, 1942).
Beninois installation artist. He studied law in France, and it was not until he returned to Benin in 1971 that he became an artist, by accident. Considered mad by his family, he was sent to a psychiatric hospital a few times before encountering Jean Michel Rousset, a young Frenchman who reassured him about his talent. In his compound Adaeagbo creates an ever-changing assemblage of found materials: sculptures, stones, clothing, newspapers. New materials are added, and old objects are rearranged. These creations function as historical documents of his times, as well as of particular days, as he works each day after his walks. His work has been described as reflecting and evoking the ‘madness in words’: the inability to understand words, and the conflicts that arise from this lack of understanding. It can also be seen as a comment on his own life and the suffering of a misunderstood artist. In Adaeagbo’s smaller pieces, objects are combined with a greater emphasis on symbolic intent than aesthetic concerns. He has exhibited at the Institut Claude-Nicolas Ledoux (...
Swedish, 20th – 21st century, male.
Born 1953.
Painter (mixed media).
Stockholm, 30 May 1989: The Original Electric Desert Hotel (1987, mixed media/paper, 21 × 26¼ ins/52.5 × 66.5 cm) SEK 7,200
Stockholm, 19 May 1992: Composition (mixed media, 56¾ × 86½ ins/144 × 220 cm) ...
Polish, 20th – 21st century, female.
Active in France from 1988.
Born 1953.
Painter (mixed media).
Ewa Adamowicz graduated from the university college of Cracow. Her work featured in the Salon Comparaisons in Paris in 1990, and she had two solo exhibitions in Poland in 1984...
American, 20th – 21st century, male.
Born 15 November 1948, in Des Moines (Iowa).
Environmental artist, video artist, installation artist.
Dennis Adams lives and works in New York and Berlin. Adams' work focuses on the relationship between architecture and images taken from political literature. He creates architectural environments that act as frameworks for text, photographs and other images. These environments, which are either temporary or permanent, are public places. The series of ...
Canadian First Nations (Oji-Cree), 20th century, female.
Born 28 March 1971, in Yorkton (Saskatchewan).
Installation artist, ceramicist, photographer, sculptor, printmaker.
KC Adams studied at Concordia University, in Montreal, Quebec, where she received her BFA in Studio Arts in 1998. Her artistic practice was further developed through artists’ residencies in Canada, at institutions in Banff, Charlottetown and Winnipeg. During her ...
American, 20th – 21st century, female.
Born 3 August 1955, in Bristol (Pennsylvania).
Painter, sculptor, video artist, installation artist.
Lisa Adams studied at the University of Heidelberg, Germany, in 1976; Scripps College, Claremont, California, obtaining a BA in 1977; and Claremont Graduate University, receiving an MFA in ...
Beninese, 20th century, male.
Born 1942, in Cotonou.
Installation artist.
Adéagbo formerly studied law in France. On the death of his father, he returned to Benin in 1971. He has not followed the traditional 'head of the family' role by choosing a dependable profession, but rather spends his time creating what the art milieux in the West call installations. He has been sectioned on several occasions at the request of his family. It has taken him several years to be able to assert his way of living....
