In his sculptural work, for which he is arguably best known, West eschews all notion of symmetry, refinement or finish, instead opting for strangely amorphous and often absurd forms intended to be touched, sat on, experienced and felt. It was his mother’s dentistry practice that would also come to shape West’s own sculptural intuition, with her pink plaster dental moulds bearing an uncanny resemblance to West’s own widespread adoption of the material and colour.ĭespite studying at the Akademie der bildenden Künste in Vienna from 1977 to 1982, West was a largely self-taught artist whose membership to Vienna’s international and collaborative bohemian art scene not only influenced his diverse use of media but engendered a participatory quality to his work that remained intrinsic throughout his practice.Įqually unwavering was his deliberate renunciation of conventionally defined notions of beauty or perfection. West’s formative artistic experience came via his mother with whom he visited the early Renaissance frescoes of Giotto and Fra Angelico in Padua and Florence during extensive absences from school. So goes the guiding mantra of Franz West, one of the twentieth century’s most significant artists whose subversive charm, wit and satirical irreverence permeates his posthumous and first ever UK retrospective at Tate Modern.īorn in Vienna in 1947 under the shadow of post-Second World War Europe, West was exposed early on to the tectonic changes of a world in conflict, where old and new, tradition and modernism, lived in stark and everyday opposition.
“I’ve always thought that the ideal is to do nothing and still be able to make a living out of it…”
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