Rebecca Warren RA (b. 1965)

Rebecca Warren was born in London in 1965, where she now lives and works. She completed her BA in Fine Art at Goldsmith’s College before going on to study at Chelsea College of Art. From 1993 – 1994 Warren was artist in residence at The Ruskin School at University of Oxford. She was nominated for the Turner Prize in 2006 and was appointed Professor at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in 2014. In October 2020 she was awarded an OBE in The Queen’s Birthday Honours for services to art.

Warren’s sculptures range from figuration to abstraction and from amorphous to more clearly recognisable forms, which are sometimes cartoonish or eroticised. Always evident in Warren’s work is the negotiation between thought and process. Ideas about authorship and authenticity and influences from literature, psychology, pop culture and art history are filtered, distorted and often discarded as they find three-dimensional form. Her sculptures can be tender and droll. She often manages to both invoke and skewer the work of familiar male artists like Willem de Kooning, Lucio Fontana, Alberto Giacometti and cartoonist R. Crumb. However, while acknowledging a debt to certain key elements of Modernist sculpture, her work also re-engages with them in order to produce new modes.

Profile

Royal Academician

Sculptor

Born: 1965 in London, England, United Kingdom

Nationality: British

Elected RA: 12 March 2014

Gender: Female

Preferred media: Sculpture