Tony Cragg

Tony Cragg (b. 1949)

Sculptor and teacher, born in Liverpool. he studied at Gloucester, Wimbledon and the Royal College of Art, 1969–77. In that year he moved to Wuppertal, Germany, teaching at Düsseldorf Kunstakademie. Within a decade he had several dozen solo shows, including London, Berlin, Hamburg, Paris, Naples, Genoa, Tokyo, New York, Toronto and Middleburg. In the late 1980s Cragg represented Britain at the Venice Biennale and won the Turner Prize, 1988. From the outset Cragg used found objects to create his sculptures, as diverse as seashore objects or plastic debris. Cragg was also interested in the creation of monolothic forms, from metal, stone and glass, as in Subcommittee, shown in his 1991 Lisson Gallery exhibition. Much of Cragg’s work with everyday objects started with the idea that it was the artist’s duty to discover the poetry, pathos and hidden values in them to transform our way of looking at them.

Text source: 'Artists in Britain Since 1945' by David Buckman (Art Dictionaries Ltd, part of Sansom & Company)