Arts and Design

A brush with… Jenny Saville




In our latest A brush with… podcast, we speak to the artist Jenny Saville about her life and work
Photo courtesy of the artist and Gagosian

In this episode of The Art Newspaper’s new podcast, Ben Luke talks to Jenny Saville about her cultural experiences and their effect on her work and life. She shares how her uncle inspired her to explore the Old Masters and match their ambition; how having children hugely affected the way she works; and the visit to an artist’s studio that changed her life.

Saville was born in Cambridge, England, in 1970. Since 1994, she has been strongly associated with the Young British Artists—the group that were championed by the collector Charles Saatchi in the early 1990s. But she is distinct from many artists that were part of that scene: at the heart of her work is a commitment to painting human bodies but with the expressive vigour of abstraction. Willem de Kooning said, “Flesh is the reason oil paint was invented” and Saville explores this idea as vividly as any painter working today. She also works on a grand scale, which can be seen in her seven-foot high painting Propped (1992) that sold for £8.25m (£9.5m with fees) at Sotheby’s in 2018, a new record for a living female artist’s work sold at auction.

A brush with… comes out every Wednesday in the month of August. You can download and subscribe to the podcast here. This episode is sponsored by Cork Street Galleries.





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