- Born:
- January 18, 1954, Nürnberg, Germany (age 72)
- Notable Family Members:
- father Tony Smith
Kiki Smith
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Who is Kiki Smith?
Kiki Smith, born in Germany in 1954, is a contemporary American artist known for her sculptures, installations, and printmaking. Her work is intense and expressionistic, exploring the body and bodily processes.
The daughter of actress and opera singer Jane Lawrence and sculptor Tony Smith, Kiki's work contrasts with her father's abstract style by studying human anatomy and the natural world.
In the 1980s, Smith examined body parts, using materials like cloth and ceramics. By 1990, she was creating full human figures, often using beeswax. Around 2000, Smith began depicting animals and female figures from fairy tales and mythology, often exploring the intersection of women and nature. Smith has received several awards, including the Skowhegan Medal for Sculpture in 2000.
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What kind of art is Kiki Smith known for creating?
Kiki Smith is a German-born American artist known for her sculptures, installations, and printmaking. Her intense, expressionistic work explores the body and bodily processes. Smith's early work often examined specific body parts, using materials like cloth, paper, and ceramics to highlight the body's vulnerability.
By 1990, she was creating full human figures, often using beeswax to suggest flesh. Smith used the body as a metaphor for life's passions and tribulations, revitalizing emotive figural sculpture. Around the turn of the 21st century, Smith began incorporating animal imagery and continued representing female figures from fairy tales and mythology. Her later works often combined women and nature, and she also explored creation stories and cosmology.
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What materials and techniques does Kiki Smith often use in her artwork?
Kiki Smith is a German-born American artist known for her sculptures, installations, and prints that explore the body and the natural world.
Smith's work often examines specific body parts, employing materials like cloth, paper, and ceramics to highlight the body's vulnerability. By 1990, she was creating full human figures, frequently using beeswax to enhance the lifelike quality of flesh. Around the turn of the 21st century, Smith began incorporating animal imagery into her art. Additionally, she represented female figures from fairy tales and mythology, often depicting the connection between women and nature. In later years, Smith explored creation stories and cosmology, creating bronze starbursts and aluminum sculptures.
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What are some common themes in Kiki Smith’s art?
Kiki Smith is a German-born American artist known for her sculptures, installations, and prints that explore the body and bodily processes.
Smith's art delves into human anatomy and the natural world, often examining specific body parts and employing materials like cloth, paper, and ceramics to highlight the body's vulnerability. By 1990, she was creating full human figures, using beeswax to evoke flesh. Smith uses the body as a metaphor for life's passions and struggles, revitalizing emotive figural sculpture.
Around the turn of the 21st century, Smith began incorporating animal imagery and continued depicting female figures from fairy tales and mythology. Her work often combines women and nature, and she has also explored creation stories and cosmology.
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How has Kiki Smith contributed to contemporary art?
Kiki Smith, born in Germany in 1954, is an American sculptor, installation artist, and printmaker known for her intense and expressionistic work that explores the body and bodily processes.
Smith's early work in the 1980s examined specific body parts, utilizing materials like cloth, paper, and ceramics to highlight the body's vulnerability. By 1990, she was creating full human figures, often using beeswax to enhance the flesh-like appearance. Smith used the body as a metaphor and her work has reinvigorated the traditions of emotive figural sculpture.
Around the turn of the 21st century, Smith began incorporating animal imagery into her prints and sculptures, often depicting females from fairy tales and mythology. Her work from the 2000s combined these interests, illustrating the relationship between women and nature. Smith also explored creation stories and cosmology, creating bronze starbursts and aluminum sculptures.
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What are some of Kiki Smith’s most famous works, and what do they represent?
Kiki Smith is a German-born American artist known for her sculptures, installations, and prints that explore the body and bodily processes.
Smith's work often uses the body as a metaphor for life's passions and struggles. In the 1980s, she examined body parts, using materials like cloth and ceramics to highlight the body's vulnerability. By 1990, she was creating full human figures, often using beeswax to mimic flesh, as seen in Untitled (1990).
Around the start of the 21st century, Smith began incorporating animal imagery and continued depicting female figures from fairy tales and mythology, such as in Wolf Girl (1999) and Singing Siren (2003). Her later works often combine women and nature, as shown in Woman with Wolf (2003), Sitting with a Snake (2007), and Sky (2011). Smith also explored creation stories, creating starbursts like Net (2012) and nebula sculptures such as Cloudburst and Spiral Nebula (Large) (2017).
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Kiki Smith (born January 18, 1954, Nürnberg, Germany) is a German-born American sculptor, installation artist, and printmaker whose intense and expressionistic work investigates the body and bodily processes.
The daughter of the American actress and opera singer Jane Lawrence and the American architect and sculptor Tony Smith, she was born in Germany, where her mother had launched a career in opera. The family returned to the United States in 1955, and Smith was raised in South Orange, New Jersey. After briefly attending the Hartford Art School, she moved to New York in 1976. Her work as a sculptor bore little resemblance to that of her father. Where he was abstract and nonfigurative, she was engaged in the study of human anatomy and the natural world.
Her work in the 1980s often examined particular parts of the body—hands, the digestive system, the pelvis, the liver—using materials such as cloth, paper, and ceramics to depict the mystery and vulnerability of the body. In 1985 she briefly studied to be an emergency medical technician. By 1990 she had begun to create fully realized human figures, and she often employed beeswax to heighten the suggestion of flesh, as in Untitled (1990). Smith used the body as a metaphor for the passions and tribulations of existence, and her work reinvigorated the tradition of expressionist and emotive figural sculpture.
Toward the turn of the 21st century Smith began to explore animal imagery in print and sculpture. She also continued to represent human figures—often females from fairy tales, folklore, mythology, and other stories—as in the print Wolf Girl (From the Blue Prints Series) (1999) and the multimedia sculpture Singing Siren (2003). From the 2000s her work combined these interests to depict the intersection between women and nature. Notable examples included the porcelain sculpture Woman with Wolf (2003), the collage Sitting with a Snake (2007), and the tapestry Sky (2011). Smith also became interested in creation stories and cosmology, making bronze wall-mounted starbursts (Net [2012]) and aluminum sculptures on iron stands (Cloudburst and Spiral Nebula (Large) [both 2017]).
Smith was the subject of many solo exhibitions, including a retrospective in 2006 organized by the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. Among the many awards she received were the Skowhegan Medal for Sculpture (2000), awarded annually by the Skowhegan (Maine) School of Painting and Sculpture; the Athena Award from the Rhode Island School of Design (2005) in recognition of her printmaking; the Edward MacDowell Medal (2009) from the MacDowell Colony artists’ residency in Peterborough, New Hampshire, for her outstanding contribution to the field of sculpture; and the U.S. State Department Medal of Arts (2012).