Studio Z emerged as an avant-garde art collective in the 1970s, a time when artistic expression outside the confines of the conventional, straight, white male mainstream often went unrecognised. Studio Z was founded by David Hammons, Senga Nengudi, Maren Hassinger and Houston Conwill, who welcomed the inclusion of numerous other artists. The collective first came…
Mariko Mori is widely recognised as one of the most important artists to have emerged from Japan over the past five decades. Her artistic approach, which stems from the idea of interconnectedness, explores various phenomena of life, such as the existence of the universe, death, reality, spirituality and technology. Her early works were heavily influenced…
Today a career in photography is considered a respectable and fairly ordinary vocation in India but the profession only emerged in the nation close to the end of the 19th century, comprising exclusively of male practitioners for some fifty years. Homai Vyarawalla, India’s first woman photojournalist, is best known for documenting the country’s transition from…
Husband and wife duo François-Xavier and Claude Lalanne, collectively known as Les Lalanne, are one of the most fascinating and prolific art couples of the 20th century. Following the more subdued aesthetics of the early 1960s, the 1970s heralded a taste for a new and bold eclecticism. Les Lalanne were at the forefront of this…
A seminal figure of South Asian architecture, Balkrishna Vithaldas Doshi is widely celebrated for his contributions to the development of architectural discourse in India. Having worked under Le Corbusier and Louis Kahn, he pioneered a culturally responsive modern architecture in his native country. In 2018, Doshi became the first Indian architect to receive the Pritzker…
Born into an affluent and conservative Irish-Catholic family in England in 1917, from the very beginning Leonora Carrington resisted conforming to societal expectations, going onto establish herself as both a critical figure in the Surrealist movement and an artist of extraordinary individuality. Her eventful life included a formative relationship with artist Max Ernst, an escape…
Jyotindra Manshankar Bhatt, better known as Jyoti Bhatt, was among the earliest students at one of the first art schools founded after India’s independence in 1947. Born in 1934 in the western state of Gujarat, through his prolific career, Bhatt documented rural Indian culture, capturing traditional ways of life, including craft customs at impending risk…
Born in rural Derbyshire in 1941, the daughter of a factory worker and cotton weaver, Vivienne Westwood relocated to Harrow, Greater London with her family as a teenager. It was here that the young designer undertook a jewellery making course at the University of Westminster, then known as the Harrow Art School, but left after…