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Anish Kapoor (born 1954) is a sculptor.
Born in Mumbai, India, Kapoor moved to London in the United Kingdom in 1972, and has lived there ever since. He studied art, first at the Hornsey College of Art, and, later at the Chelsea School of Art Design. He also attended the prestigeous Doon School, located in Dehra Dun, India. He has lived in Bristol, England since then, although he frequently visits India, and has acknowledged that his art is inspired by both western and eastern cultures.
In the early 1980s, Kapoor emerged as one of a number of British sculptors working in a new style and gaining some international recognition with their work (the others included Tony Cragg, Richard Deacon, Anthony Gormley, Bill Woodrow and Richard Wentworth).
Kapoor's pieces are often simple, curved forms, usually monochromatic, and frequently brightly coloured. Powdered pigments sometimes cover the works and sometimes lie on the floor around the works as well. This practice is inspired by the mounds of brightly coloured pigments Kapoor saw on his visits to India.
Since the end of the 1990s, Kapoor has produced a number of very large works, including Taratantara (1999), a 35 metre-tall piece installed in the Baltic Flour Mills in Gateshead, England, before renovation began there, and Marsyas (2002), a large work of steel and polyvinyl chloride installed in the Turbine Hall of Tate Modern. In 2000, one of Kapoor's works, Parabolic Waters, consisting of rapidly rotating coloured water, was shown outside the Millennium Dome in London. In 2004, Cloud Gate, a 110-ton (100,000 kg) stainless steel piece, was unveiled at Millennium Park in Chicago in the United States. Solo exhibitions of Kapoor's work have been held in Kunsthalle Basel in Switzerland, Reina Sofia in Madrid, Spain, and the CAPC Museum of Contemporary Art in Bordeaux, France.
Kapoor represented Britain in the 1990 Venice Biennale, and the following year he won the Turner Prize.
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