Jeff Koons
(Born 1955)
Jeff Koons was born in York, Pennsylvania in 1955. He attended the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, which included an exchange year at the Art Institute of Chicago, receiving his BFA in 1976. Koons’s artistic career started at the young age of eight, when he painted replicas of Old Master paintings and sold them at his father’s furniture store. Following his university education, the artist moved to New York, where he started working at the Museum of Modern Art as a membership sales representative. While there, he garnered some attention for his outrageous outfits and impressive salesmanship. Koons mixed with artists such as Julian Schnabel and David Salle, which, combined with New York clubs and music, pushed him to evolve his practice. Moving away from representations which referred to his fantasies, he sought a more objective art that reflected the world of politics and commerce. It was during this period that Koons started working on his seminal Inflatables series crafted with the first inflatable pink bunny and brightly colored acrylic flowers against mirrors—iconography and concepts that developed and flourished over the subsequent years. Koons left the Museum of Modern Art for Wall Street to work at a brokerage firm selling commodities. The artist’s first solo show took place in 1980 at the New Museum in New York.
Throughout Koons’s five-decade-long career, he has both shocked and delighted the public. From his Banality and provocative Made in Heaven series to his ultra-reflective Celebration sculptures that resemble childlike balloon animals, Koons has built a diverse body of work that speaks profoundly to our commercialised society. In 2019, Koons achieved the accolade of being the most expensive living artist after his iconic sculpture, Rabbit (1986) sold at Christie’s New York for $91.1 million. He also garnered significant recognition for the monumental floral sculpture Puppy (1992) and Balloon Dog (1994-2000). Coming to prominence during the golden years of the contemporary art market in the 1980s, Koons’s works are instantly recognisable yet completely distinctive. Whilst appropriating iconography from mass media, he is commonly associated with Pop art as well as the Conceptual and Minimalist movements, following the trajectory paved by Andy Warhol and Marcel Duchamp.
Jeff Koons has exhibited extensively in renowned institutions including solo exhibitions at the Palazzo Strozzi, Florence (2022); Qatar Museums, Doha (2022); Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (2019); The Natural History Museum, Vienna (2015); Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao (2015); The Centre Pompidou, Paris (2014); Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2014); Fondation Beyeler, Basel (2012); Serpentine Gallery, London (2009); The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2008); Château de Versailles, Versailles (2008); Helsinki Art Museum, Helsinki (2005); Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art, Oslo (2004); Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples (2003); Guggenheim Museum, New York (2002); and Deutsche Guggenheim Berlin (2000). His work is held in the permanent collections of The Broad, Los Angeles; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Tate Gallery, London, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Jeff Koons lives and works in New York.