Michael Craig-Martin was born in
Dublin Ireland in 1941. He grew up and was educated in the United States,
studying Fine Art at the Yale University School of Art. He came to Britain on
completion of his studies in 1966, and has lived and worked there ever since.
His first solo exhibition was at the Rowan Gallery, London
in 1969. He participated in the definitive exhibition of British conceptual
art, “The New Art” at the Hayward Gallery in 1972. Throughout his career,
through work in many different media, he has explored the expressive potential
of commonplace objects and images. His best known works include ‘An oak tree of
1973’, in which he claimed to have changed a glass of water into an oak tree;
his large-scale black and white wall drawings; and his intensely coloured
paintings, installations, and public commissions.
Over the past fifteen years he has shown exhibitions and
site specific installations in numerous museums and public galleries including
Kunsthaus Bregenz, the Centre Pompidou, MoMA, the Kunstvereins in Hannover,
Dusseldorf, and Stuttgart, IVAM in Valencia, the Magasin in Grenoble, the Arp
Museum in Rolandseck, and the National Art Center Tokyo. He also represented
Britain in the 23rd Sao Paulo Biennal. A retrospective of his work was
presented at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London 1989 and at the Irish Museum
of Modern Art in Dublin in 2006.
Craig-Martin is well known to have been an influential
teacher at Goldsmiths College London, and is considered a key figure in the
emergence of the young British artists in the early 90’s. Amongst his former
students are Ian Davenport, Damien Hirst, Gary Hume, Liam Gillick, Michael
Landy, Sarah Lucas, Julian Opie, and Fiona Rae.
He was an Artist Trustee of the Tate Gallery from 1989-99,
received a CBE in 2001, and was elected to the Royal Academy in 2006.
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