Anthony Gormley

Sir Antony Gormley (1950) was born in Hampstead, London, England. He grew up in a German-Irish family in Dewsbury Moor, West Yorkshire. He studied archaeology, anthropology, and art history at Trinity College in Cambridge. After spending three years in India and Sri Lanka, he studied at the Central Saint Martin’s College of Art and Design (then Central School of Art) and the Goldsmith College in London. Much of his work is based on his own body, playing with his bodily form, always in relation to the surroundings. Both in interiors as well as landscapes, like Another Time (installed in 2017) in the sea near Margate, where 100 body sculptures are visible, or not, depending on the tide. On this subject he says that he likes to emphasize the stillness of a sculpture, as a counterpart to earlier artists in the history of art who, in contrast, wanted to picture movement. Antony Gormley’s work has been exhibited multiple times, as in the Tate Gallery and the British Museum and internationally in museums. Gormley took part in the Biennale in Venice and in Documenta 8 in Kassel, Germany (1980s). In 1994 he received the Turner Prize for his installation The Fields Beneath. Gormley was knighted in the 2014 New Year Honours for services to the arts, having previously been appointed OBE (Order of the British Empire) in 1998.