Jenny Saville

In her oeuvre, the renowned English artist Jenny Saville (born 1970), who is one of the Young British Artists and was the only painter to take part in the legendary exhibition Sensation at the Royal Academy of Arts in London in 1997, explores the centuries-old tradition of images of the body since the Renaissance, which oscillates between idealization and deconstruction. Physicality, carnality and mediality are the focus of an interest that ranges from old masters such as Leonardo and Raphael to Schiele, Picasso, Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud.

Saville translates old techniques into an original, contemporary approach that oscillates between figuration and abstraction. She develops her figurative depictions, comparable to a sculptor, mostly from abstract color fields and coloristic layers of paint that gradually take on form and face. Ancient or Christian iconographies, such as the Pietà depiction, serve as a model for her exploration of composition and space-figure-surface arrangements. Ultimately, the artist is also concerned with the development of a hybrid canon of forms that uses its models as a starting point for updating what has been handed down historically.

In doing so, Saville interweaves the media of painting and drawing and explores the aesthetic potential of the graphic-painterly: She paints huge paper works with color, and canvases are in turn treated with chalk and charcoal. Since the 1990s, she has been creating figurative depictions with an accentuated, explicit physicality, characterized by directness and immediacy, even unusual, sometimes extreme views of the body. In addition to the large figures and nudes in classical poses – standing, reclining, sitting and their contemporary variations – the artist also devotes herself primarily to portraits and self-portraits. A conventional understanding of beauty and ugliness loses its meaning in Saville's work.

The ALBERTINA Museum is now organizing the first solo exhibition of the well-known British artist in Austria and provides a retrospective insight into the artistic developments of the last three decades. The show in the historic Column Hall also presents new works that have never been shown before.

On view at the ALBERTINA from 21 March until 29 May 2025.