Anish Kapoor and his art: What makes him the most successful Indian artist alive

Mumbai-born Kapoor won the prestigious Turner Prize in 1991. He became the first living artist to have a solo exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts in London in 2008, and was knighted in 2013 in recognition of his contribution to arts in Britain. His work is also featured in Britain’s newly designed passport (first released in 2015). In 2016, he controversially acquired the exclusive rights to the Vantablack pigment, considered to be the world’s “blackest black”.

Here is the story of Anish Kapoor and his art.

Rise to global reckoning

Kapoor was born in 1954, in Mumbai to parents he has described as “cosmopolitan and modern” — his mother was from a family of Jewish migrants from Iraq, and his father was a Rawalpindi-born Punjabi hydrographer in the Indian Navy.

He studied at the prestigious Doon School in Dehradun, before moving to kibbutz in Israel in 1971. While Kapoor had enrolled to study engineering, he quit after a few months owing to issues with mathematics, and decided to pursue art instead.

After being rejected by Jerusalem’s Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, he left for the UK where he studied in London’s Hornsey College of Art from 1973–77, followed by the Chelsea School of Art (1977–78). At this time, he found a mentor in British-Romanian artist Paul Neagu, who helped him develop an individual artistic vocabulary.

In 1979, Kapoor visited India. This would be the inspiration for his earliest notable work, a series titled 1000 Names, comprising geometric forms coated with brightly-coloured pigment powder. In a 1991 interview, he said: “1000 Names implies that the objects are part of a much bigger whole. The objects seem to be coming out of the ground or the wall, the powder defining a surface, implying that there is something below the surface, like an iceberg poking out of the subconscious”.

By the mid 1980s, Kapoor had made a name for himself with his biomorphic and geometric sculptures. In 1990, he represented Britain at the Venice Biennale, showcasing, among other works, Void Field (1989) which comprised 16 sandstone blocks with holes and pigments.

Signature Kapoor

Known for his minimal approach, Kapoor’s largely monochromatic mind-bending forms challenge perception, gravity and depth, and blur the boundaries between art, architecture, and the surrounding environment in which the work rests.

“Anish Kapoor first became known for his brightly-coloured pigment sculptures which seemed to fuse forms and associations of his Indian heritage and his adopted European culture. In the late ’80s and ’90s he was acclaimed for his remarkable explorations of matter and non-matter, specifically evoking the void in both free-standing sculptural works and ambitious installations,” reads a note on the website of the prestigious Lisson Gallery.

The late 1980s and 1990s saw him produce biomorphic sculptures and installations with materials such as stone, aluminum and resin. Since 1995, he has also worked with the reflective surface of polished stainless steel, playing with curvilinear forms as well as industrial materials such as PVC and fiberglass. The recurring use of red wax is symbolic of blood and flesh — among his most notable works created with the material is Svayambh (‘self-generated’ in Sanskrit) with a 1.5 meter block of red wax, shown at the Haus der Kunst in Munich in 2007, and the Royal Academy in London in 2009.

‘Sky Mirror’ by Anish Kapoor

One of the earlier versions of his water whirlpools that swirl into a deep central vortex was created at the 2014-15 Kochi-Muziris Biennale. Titled Descension, the Kochi work was dug 10-odd feet below the ground. Speaking to The Indian Express, Kapoor had stated, “It goes right till the centre of the Earth… I don’t want it to be an artwork, I want it to be a phenomenon.”

Celebrated public commissions

Kapoor has often emphasised the need to take art to the masses. One of his earliest public commissions came in 1995, when he created Cast Iron Mountain at the Tachikawa Art Project in Japan.

Installed outside the theatre in Wellington Circus, Nottingham, his 2001 Sky Mirror is a six-metre wide concave stainless steel sculpture angled towards the sky.

One of his most recognised public installations, installed at Chicago’s Millennium Park since 2006, Cloud Gate is a bean-shaped 110-ton stainless steel sculpture with a mirror finish.

Referring to the biblical Leviathan — a multi-headed sea serpent killed by God and given as food to the Hebrews in the wilderness — Kapoor’s Leviathan, exhibited at Grand Palais in Paris in 2011, comprised three 35 meter-high interconnected balloons, and allowed visitors to walk inside the work.

While his 16-foot tall polished-steel hourglass Turning the World Upside Down has been outside Jerusalem’s Israel Museum since 2010, his Cinema di Terra at Pollino National Park, the largest national park in Italy, is a massive 45-meter long installation dug into the earth.

Kapoor is also the artist behind Britain’s tallest sculpture — the 114.5-metre tall Orbit at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in Stratford, London. He created the artwork in 2012, when London was playing host to the Summer Olympics.