Menu

Jenny Saville

Territories

October 2–November 6, 1999
Wooster Street, New York

Jenny Saville, Shift, 1996–97 Oil on canvas, 130 × 130 inches (330 × 330 cm)

Jenny Saville, Shift, 1996–97

Oil on canvas, 130 × 130 inches (330 × 330 cm)

Jenny Saville, Hyphen, 1999 Oil on canvas, 108 × 144 inches (274.3 × 365.8 cm)

Jenny Saville, Hyphen, 1999

Oil on canvas, 108 × 144 inches (274.3 × 365.8 cm)

Jenny Saville, Matrix, 1999 Oil on canvas, 84 × 120 inches (213.4 × 304.8 cm)

Jenny Saville, Matrix, 1999

Oil on canvas, 84 × 120 inches (213.4 × 304.8 cm)

Jenny Saville, Fulcrum, 1999 Oil on canvas, 103 × 192 inches (261.6 × 487.7 cm)

Jenny Saville, Fulcrum, 1999

Oil on canvas, 103 × 192 inches (261.6 × 487.7 cm)

Jenny Saville, Ruben's Flap, 1999 Oil on canvas, 120 × 96 inches (304.8 × 243.8 cm)

Jenny Saville, Ruben's Flap, 1999

Oil on canvas, 120 × 96 inches (304.8 × 243.8 cm)

About

Gagosian is pleased to present the first solo exhibition of the acclaimed young British painter Jenny Saville. Since first appearing on the London art scene in 1994 as the star of the Saatchi Gallery’s Young British Artists III and Sensation exhibitions, Saville has been recognized as one of the most thought-provoking and technically accomplished talents of her generation.

In this long-awaited exhibition of her new work, two years in the making, the distinctive nature of Saville’s giant, fleshy nudes is both surprising and provocative; her virtuoso nudes are reminiscent of the old masters, yet employed to question societal obsession with an idealized, almost robotic, image of the female form. By portraying these “images of extreme humanness” that are so out of place in an anxious culture obsessed with eternal youth and beauty, Saville confronts the very essence of what it means to have an active mind in a decaying, dying body.

Characteristic of Saville’s work, her paint becomes flesh as it evokes the feel and touch of the body, its smell and material presence. Freed from the conventions of feminine delicacy, her gargantuan figures cascade across the canvas and into the viewer’s physical space. The vast images of corpulent bodies are deliberately ambiguous as the paintings impose themselves on the viewer and surround the body that is looking at them. The viewer cannot escape the implications of their physical being.

Read more

Jenny Saville and Martin Gayford

In Conversation
Jenny Saville and Martin Gayford

Gagosian hosted a conversation between Jenny Saville and Martin Gayford, art critic and author, in conjunction with the exhibition Friends and Relations: Lucian Freud, Francis Bacon, Frank Auerbach, Michael Andrews at Gagosian, Grosvenor Hill, London. Gayford also spoke with the artist about her works in the exhibition Jenny Saville: Latent at Gagosian, rue de Castiglione, Paris.

Image of Jenny Saville standing in front of her artworks

Jenny Saville: Latent

In this video, Jenny Saville describes the evolution of her practice inside her latest exhibition, Latent, at Gagosian, Paris. She addresses the genesis of the title and reflects on the anatomy of a painting.

Jenny Saville, Pietà I, 2019–21, charcoal and pastel on canvas

Jenny Saville: A cyclical rhythm of emergent forms

An exhibition curated by Sergio Risaliti, director of the Museo Novecento, Florence, pairs artworks by Jenny Saville with artists of the Italian Renaissance. On view across that city at the Museo Novecento, the Museo di Palazzo Vecchio, the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, the Museo degli Innocenti, and the Museo di Casa Buonarroti through February 20, 2022, the presentation features paintings and drawings by Saville from the 1990s through to work made especially for the occasion. Here, Risaliti reflects on the resonances and reverberations brought about by these pairings.

A Jenny Saville painting titled Self-Portrait (after Rembrandt), oil on paper

Jenny Saville: Painting the Self

Jenny Saville speaks with Nicholas Cullinan, the director of the National Portrait Gallery, London, about her latest self-portrait, her studio practice, and the historical painters to whom she continually returns.

Jenny Saville’s Prism (2020) on the cover of Gagosian Quarterly magazine.

Now available
Gagosian Quarterly Winter 2020

The Winter 2020 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, featuring Jenny Saville’s Prism (2020) on its cover.

Jenny Saville, Study for Pentimenti I, 2011, graphite and pastel on paper.

Shortlist
Five Preoccupations: Jenny Saville

Jenny Saville shares a selection of the books, films, and more that have been her companions in the quiet of the shutdowns in recent months and as she looks ahead to a new exhibition next year.

News

Photo: courtesy the artist

Artist Spotlight

Jenny Saville

July 22–28, 2020

In her depictions of the human form, Jenny Saville transcends the boundaries of both classical figuration and modern abstraction. Oil paint, applied in heavy layers, becomes as visceral as flesh itself, each painted mark maintaining a supple, mobile life of its own. As Saville pushes, smears, and scrapes the pigment over her large-scale canvases, the distinctions between living, breathing bodies and their painted representations begin to collapse.

Photo: courtesy the artist