JENNY SAVILLE

Saville rose to acclaim early in her career, first known for the infamous 1997 Sensation exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. Her monumental paintings, described by some as aggressive in scale, gathered controversy due to her depiction of unidealized, grotesquely contorted, bodies. Challenging dominant beauty standards, her figures roll and stretch across the canvas in their imperfect and natural forms.

Jenny Saville creates enormous canvases that focus on bodies, especially those of women, in an unflinching and visceral manner. Confrontational and voluminous, soft and maternal, she balances the grace of the line with the tension of the body. Likening the physicality of paint to the feeling and appearance of skin, Saville constructs sometimes horrifying images of contemporary identity.

Though depicting the figure in a manner worthy of the Old Masters, Saville pushes against the familiar imagery of historical nudes. Her work combines the physicality and muscularity of Classical and Renaissance painters with the confusion and overlapping figures in the Cubist style. Though focused on physicality, what sets Saville apart from her influences is her reliance on conceptual, critical social messages. In opposition to the shapes which women are expected to conform themselves to, Saville meditates on the “imperfections” of flesh, with all its societal implications and taboos.