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Jenny Saville

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Jenny Saville
RA
Born
Jennifer Anne Saville

7 May 1970 (1970-05-07) (age 56)
Cambridge, England
EducationUniversity of Cincinnati, Glasgow School of Art
Known forPainting
MovementYoung British Artists
Relatives

Jennifer Anne Saville RA (born 7 May 1970)[1] is an English figurative painter and an original member of the Young British Artists (YBAs).[2][3] Saville lives and works in Oxford, England,[4] and is noted for her large-scale nudes of unconventional female subjects. Some credit her with originating a new method of painting the female nude for contemporary art.[5]: 26–29 

Recurring figures depicted in her work range from mothers, children, transgender people, burn victims, and cosmetic surgery patients.[5] Although her work subverts many beauty standards and invokes contemporary feminist theory, she often utilizes references from art history in her paintings.[6]

As of 2018, she is regarded as the "Most Expensive Living Female Artist" after her work Propped (1992) sold at Sotheby’s Auction House for £9.5 million (~US$11.7 million).[7]

Early life and education

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Saville was born in Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, England.[2] She went to the Lilley and Stone School (now The Newark Academy) in Newark, Nottinghamshire, for her secondary education.

From 1988 to 1992, Saville earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at the Glasgow School of Art.[4] While studying there, she was awarded a six-month scholarship to the University of Cincinnati, where she enrolled in a course in women's studies.[8]: 19  She partially credits her artistic interest in big bodies to the works of Pablo Picasso.[9]

Career

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The Saatchi Gallery opened in 1985

Her early series included large-scale self-portraits and other models.[1] Charles Saatchi offered Saville an 18-month contract, supporting her while she created new works to be exhibited at the Saatchi Gallery in London. In 1994, the exhibition Young British Artists III displayed Saville's self-portrait, Plan (1993), as the signature piece.[10] As part of the Young British Artists (YBAs) scene, Saville has been noted for her contemporary style of figure painting.[citation needed]

Since her debut in 1992, Saville's focus has remained on the female body, stating she is "drawn to bodies that emanate a sort of state of in-betweenness: hermaphrodite, a transvestite, a carcass, a half-alive/half-dead head."[11]

In 1994, Saville observed plastic surgery operations in New York City.[12] Her published sketches and documents include surgical photographs of liposuction, trauma victims, deformity correction, disease, and transgender patients.[13] Much of her work features distorted flesh, while others reveal the marks of plastic surgery.

Between 1996 and 2002, Saville collaborated with photographer Glen Luchford to produce Closed Contact, a series of large photographic prints which depict Saville's nude body pressed up against a clear panel. The series explores femininity and the challenges the perception of the female body. [14]

Album covers

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Saville's paintings have appeared on two album covers:

  • 1994 – Strategy (South Face/Front Face/North Face) appeared on the cover of Manic Street Preachers' third album The Holy Bible.[15]
  • 2009 – Stare (2005) was used for Manic Street Preacher's 2009 album Journal for Plague Lovers.[16] UK supermarkets stocked the CD in a plain slipcase, after the cover was deemed "inappropriate".[16] The band's James Dean Bradfield said the decision was "utterly bizarre and commented,: "You can have lovely shiny buttocks and guns everywhere in the supermarket on covers of magazines and CDs, but you show a piece of art and people just freak out".[16] The album cover art was placed second in a 2009 poll for Best Art Vinyl.[17]

Recent work

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In Saville's recent works,[when?] she has employed graphite, charcoal, and pastel to render overlapping figures. These works are reminiscent of traditional underdrawings and illustrate themes of movement, hybridity, and gender ambiguity.[8]: 24  Saville states, "If I draw through previous bodily forms in an arbitrary or contradictory way; ...it gives the work a kind of life force or Eros. Destruction, regeneration, a cyclic rhythm of emerging forms".[8]: 21–22 

In 2018, Saville's Propped (1992) sold at Sotheby's in London for £9.5 million, well above its £3-£4 million estimate,[6] becoming the most expensive work by a living female artist sold at auction.[7]

Torso (2004–2005), oil on canvas

Work

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Materials and technique

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Saville is known for her use of massive canvases, usually six by six feet (1.8 by 1.8 m) or more,[6] and works with strongly pigmented oil paint applied in heavy layers.

Saville primarily works on large-scale canvases placed on the floor, using brushes and extended tools to apply and manipulate paint, [3] pushing, smearing, and scraping the pigment across the canvases.[18] Saville's painting often uses small brushstrokes to build up the paint and soften the imaging. Using this technique, the finish of a painting is matte without appearing "dry".[19]

Visual style

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Jenny Saville's post-painterly style[20] has been compared to that of Lucian Freud[21] and Rubens.[22] She frequently utilizes muted colour combinations for her art pieces to create a soft atmosphere that contrasts with her usually intense subject matter.[19] Other complementary analyses have been proposed on the technique: Kenny Smith of the Scottish Field has commented that Saville's layering of colors and techniques "capture a sense of motion and fluidity. These restless images provide no fixed point, but rather suggest the perception of simultaneous realities."[23] Saville's technique creates a look that is visceral and fleshy,[18] with the size of her paintings allowing the viewer to see the details and layering of her aesthetic of movement and abstract realism.[6]

From the beginning of her career, Saville has engaged in the exploration of the body and its historical representation. Saville borrows conventions from a long tradition in figure painting, whether in poses borrowed from Madonna and Child paintings by Leonardo da Vinci, the use of a colour palette reminiscent of Peter Paul Rubens, or the gestural painting of Willem de Kooning in his Woman series. Saville appropriates these techniques associated with male masters to create portraiture from a female point of view.[24]

Subject matter

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The primary subject of Saville's works are the female nude and figuration, with the majority of all of Saville’s early works being the artist herself, and having almost exclusively painted female subjects since.[25] Her works often "depict distorted, fleshy, and disquieting female bodies" to provoke the viewer.[26] "I paint flesh because I'm human", she has said. "If you work in oil, as I do, it comes naturally. Flesh is just the most beautiful thing to paint."[26]

In 2004, Saville explored the idea of floating gender in her work Passage. Saville is quoted saying "With the transvestite I was searching for a body that was between genders. I had explored that idea a little in Matrix. The idea of floating gender is not fixed. The transvestite I worked with has a natural penis and false silicone breasts. Thirty or forty years ago this body couldn't have existed and I was looking for a kind of contemporary architecture of the body. I wanted to paint a visual passage through gender – a sort of gender landscape."[27]

After having children, Saville's subjects and methods became freer, though still revolve around the depiction of bodies. Her references expanded to include motherhood, art history, and ancient myth.[28]

Themes and influences

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Saville’s work has been read as directed against the fantasy that humans can be the complete authors of their lives.[5]: 8–9 

Saville seeks to break down the social conventions that encourage women to fit into limiting beauty standards, having expressed issues regarding the prevalence of generally accepted standards of beauty: "A lot of women [are] made to fear their own excess, taken in by the cult of exercise, the great quest to be thin. The rhetoric used against obesity makes it sound far worse than alcohol or smoking, yet they can do you far more damage".[29] Her unconventional views on beauty expand the traditional nude form into a way to comment on the body, gender politics, sexuality, and self-realisation.

Saville plays upon the "ambiguity of embodiment" and what it means to be "feminine" or "beautiful" through the use of the distortion and "disgust".[26] This "aesthetic of disgust" frequently pushes viewers to view and confront conceptions of women in Western society, giving some the autonomy to decide their own standard of beauty beyond society.[26] Scholars like Loren Erdrich argue there is a direct link between the physical body, identity, and the self presented within Saville's subjects.[30] In an interview for the Saatchi Gallery, Saville comments that she tries to create a balance between abstract and aesthetic effect and realistic depiction of the body in her work.[27]

Select works

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  • Branded (1992). Oil painting on a 7 ft × 6 ft (2.1 m × 1.8 m) canvas. Saville paints her own face onto an obese female body, the figure in the painting holding folds of her skin which she is seemingly showing off.[31]
  • Plan (1993). Oil painting on a 9 ft × 7 ft (2.7 m × 2.1 m) canvas. A nude female figure with contour lines marked on her body, much like that of a topographical map. Saville said of this work: "The lines on her body are the marks they make before you have liposuction done to you. They draw these things that look like targets. I like this idea of mapping of the body, not necessarily areas to be cut away, but like geographical contours on a map. I didn't draw onto the body. I wanted the idea of cutting into the paint. Like you would cut into the body. It evokes the idea of surgery. It has lots of connotations."[32]
  • Closed Contact (1995–1996). She collaborated with artist Glen Luchford to create a series of C-prints depicting a larger female nude lying on plexiglass. The photographs were taken from underneath the glass and depict the female figure very distorted.[32]
  • Hybrid (1997). Oil painting on a 7 ft × 6 ft (2.1 m × 1.8 m) canvas. In this painting, the image looks much like patchwork. Different components of four female bodies are incorporated together to create a unique piece.[32]
  • Fulcrum (1999). Oil painting on an 8+1⁄2 ft × 16 ft (2.6 m × 4.9 m) canvas. Three obese women are piled on a medical trolley. Thin vertical strips of tape have been painted over and then pulled off the canvas, creating a sense of geometric measure at odds with the flesh.[33]
  • Hem (1999). Oil painting on a 10 ft × 7 ft (3.0 m × 2.1 m) canvas. This painting depicts a large nude female with subtle textures. The stomach has a glow, while the figure's left side is covered with thick white paint as if by a plaster cast. Her pubic area, painted pink over dark brown, resembles carved and painted wood.[33]
  • Matrix (1999). Oil painting on a 7 ft × 10 ft (2.1 m × 3.0 m) canvas. In this painting, Saville depicts a reclining nude figure with female breasts and genitalia, but with a masculine, bearded face. The genitalia is thrust to the foreground, making it the main focus. The arms and legs of the figure are only partly seen, the extremities lying outside the boundary of the picture.[34][better source needed]

Reception

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Saville's work Propped (1992), which is the most expensive work sold at an auction house by a living female artist, has been described as "one of the undisputed masterpieces of the Young British Artists" by Sotheby's European head of Contemporary Art, Alex Branczik.[7] This piece is said to be masterful because it is "the superlative self-portrait that shatters canonised representations of female beauty."[25]

She is one of two women to have made the top 10 auction lots sold in 2023, alongside Julie Mehretu.[35]

Saville's artistic style has garnered feedback about her use of detail and engaged discussion about the perception of women.[citation needed] Suzie Mackenzie of The Guardian has expressed that Saville's works are "[a] confrontation with the dynamics of exposure...her exaggerated nudes point up, with an agonising frankness, the disparity between the way women are perceived and the way that they feel about their bodies."[36] Gallerist Asana Greenstreet has also commented that Saville performs "explorations of people that are both intimate and uncomfortable. Through detailed, frank and unapologetic investigations of the human body, dialogues occur between past and present, and are animated by questions of gender, suffering, and ambiguity."[37] Michelle Meagher writes that Saville sees standards of "beauty and pleasure [as] deeply embedded within Western [culture]", yet, she constantly tries to challenge these assumptions of the body and beauty.[26]

Exhibitions

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Solo exhibitions

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Year Title Venue Location Notes Ref.
1999 Territories Gagosian Gallery New York
2003 Migrants Gagosian Gallery New York [38]
2005 Museo d'Arte Contemporanea Roma Rome
2006 Museo Carlo Billoti Rome
2010 Gagosian Gallery London
2011 Continuum Gagosian Gallery New York
2012 Jenny Saville Norton Museum of Art West Palm Beach, Florida Part of the Norton's RAW series – Recognition of Art by Women
2012 Jenny Saville Modern Art Oxford [39][40]
2016 Jenny Saville Drawing Ashmolean Museum Venice Formed the final section of the 'Titian to Canaletto: Drawing in Venice' exhibition. Twenty new works on paper and canvas were produced in response to the Venetian drawings in the exhibition [41]
2016 Erota Gagosian Gallery London Frawings inspired by the previous "Titian to Canaletto: Drawing in Venice" exhibition. [42]
2018 Ancestors Gagosian Gallery New York [43][44]
Jenny Saville The George Economou Collection Athens [45]
2025 Jenny Saville: The Anatomy of Painting National Portrait Gallery London [46]
Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth [47]
Jenny Saville Albertina Museum Albertina, Vienna [48]
2026 Jenny Saville a Ca’ Pesaro International Gallery of Modern Art Venice At 2026 Venice Biennale [49][50][51]

Group exhibitions

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Year Title Venue Location Notes Ref.
1992 Cooling Gallery London
1994 Young British Artists III Saatchi Gallery London
1996 Contemporary British Art '96 Museum of Kalmar Stockholm
A Collaboration Pace/McGill Gallery New York In collaboration with Glen Luchford
1997 Sensation Royal Academy of Art London
2002 Closed Contact Gagosian Gallery Beverly Hills In collaboration with Glen Luchford
2004 Large Scale Polaroids by Jenny Saville and Glen Luchford University of Massachusetts Amherst, East Gallery Massachusetts
2014 Egon Schiele - Jenny Saville Kunsthaus Zürich Zürich
2018 Now Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art Edinburgh During the Edinburgh Art Festival [52]

Other activities

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References

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  1. 1 2 Grant, Catherine M. (2017). Jenny Saville. doi:10.1093/gao/9781884446054.article.T096964. ISBN 978-1-884446-05-4. Retrieved 21 October 2022.
  2. 1 2 Royal Academy of Arts: Jenny Saville RA | Artist | Royal Academy of Arts Archived 18 December 2014 at the Wayback Machine, accessdate: 29 August 2014
  3. 1 2 When Alan Yentob Met Jenny Saville. Retrieved 2 April 2026 – via BBC.
  4. 1 2 "Jenny Saville". Gagosian Gallery. Archived from the original on 23 December 2012. Retrieved 15 December 2012.
  5. 1 2 3 Schama, Simon (2005). Jenny Saville. New York, NY: Rizzoli International Publications Inc. ISBN 978-0-8478-2757-2.
  6. 1 2 3 4 Cohen, Alina (11 October 2018). "Jenny Saville Changed the Way We View the Female Form". Artsy. Retrieved 29 February 2020.
  7. 1 2 3 Freeman, Nate (6 October 2018). "Jenny Saville Is Now the World's Most Expensive Living Female Artist". Artsy. Retrieved 9 March 2019.
  8. 1 2 3 Calvocoressi, Richard (2018). Jenny Saville. New York: Rizzoli International Publications. ISBN 9780847862900.
  9. ↑ "Jenny Saville Biography Archived 13 March 2008 at the Wayback Machine". Artbank.com. Retrieved on 5 February 2008.
  10. ↑ "SAVILLE, Jenny". Benezit Dictionary of Artists. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press. Web. 24 September 2015. <http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/benezit/B00300069>.
  11. ↑ Grey, John (2005). Saville. New York: Rizzoli. p. 124. ISBN 0847827577.
  12. ↑ "Jenny Saville Biography, Works of Art, Auction Results – Invaluable". Invaluable.com.
  13. ↑ Schama, Simon. "Jenny Saville". The Saatchi Gallery, 2005. Retrieved on 6 February 2008.
  14. ↑ "Jenny Saville & Glen Luchford: Closed Contact, Beverly Hills, January 12–February 9, 2002". Gagosian. 1 August 2019. Retrieved 17 May 2026.
  15. ↑ Middles, Mick. "Manic Street Preachers". London: Omnibus Press, January 2000. p.136. ISBN 0-7119-7738-0
  16. 1 2 3 "Supermarkets cover up Manics CD". BBC. 14 May 2009. Retrieved 2 April 2026.
  17. ↑ "Best Art Vinyl 2009 Winners". Art Vinyl. Archived from the original on 6 January 2010. Retrieved 1 November 2010.
  18. 1 2 "Jenny Saville". Gagosian. 12 April 2018. Retrieved 29 February 2020.
  19. 1 2 Robinson, Hilary, "Approaching Painting through Feminine Morphology", "Paragraph 25, no. 3", 2002
  20. ↑ Hudson, Mark (24 June 2014). "Jenny Saville: 'I like the down and dirty side of things'". The Telegraph. Retrieved 6 August 2019.
  21. ↑ Cooke, Rachel (9 June 2012). "Jenny Saville: 'I want to be a painter of modern life, and modern bodies'". The Guardian. London.
  22. ↑ "A conversation with Rubens: Tim Marlow interviews Jenny Saville RA | Royal Academy of Arts". www.royalacademy.org.uk. Retrieved 20 April 2026.
  23. ↑ Kenny Smith (26 March 2018), Jenny Saville’s work is put in the frame in Scotland Scottish Field.
  24. ↑ "Jenny Saville Paintings, Bio, Ideas". The Art Story. Retrieved 29 February 2020.
  25. 1 2 "The Groundbreaking Self-Portrait That Launched Jenny Saville's Career". Sotheby's. Archived from the original on 4 February 2019.
  26. 1 2 3 4 5 Meagher, Michelle (2003). "Jenny Saville and a Feminist Aesthetics of Disgust". Hypatia. 18 (4): 23–41. doi:10.1111/j.1527-2001.2003.tb01411.x. ISSN 0887-5367. S2CID 145427602.
  27. 1 2 "Jenny Saville – Artist's Profile". The Saatchi Gallery. Retrieved 29 February 2020.
  28. ↑ "Jenny Saville Paintings, Bio, Ideas". The Art Story. Retrieved 1 May 2026.
  29. ↑ Hunter Davies (1 March 1994), "This is Jenny and this is her plan", Independent.
  30. ↑ Erdrich, Loren, "I Am a Monster: The Indefinite and the Malleable in Contemporary Female Self-Portraiture", Circa, no. 121, 2007, doi:10.2307/25564831.
  31. ↑ "Jenny Saville – Feminism and Self-Portraiture". Art1eproject.wetpaint.com. Archived from the original on 7 April 2013. Retrieved 17 February 2013.
  32. 1 2 3 "Gallery of the Work of Jenny Saville". Employees.oneonta.edu. Retrieved 17 February 2013.
  33. 1 2 Smith, Roberta (15 October 1999). "ART IN REVIEW; Jenny Saville". The New York Times.
  34. ↑ "Jenny Saville: Destroyer of False Fetishes (Fine Art Year One. January 2009.)". theshutteredroom. 8 July 2011. Retrieved 17 February 2013.
  35. ↑ Network, Artnet Gallery (5 March 2024). "5 Quick Takeaways From the Artnet Intelligence Report". Artnet News. Retrieved 9 March 2024.
  36. ↑ Suzie Mackenzie (22 October 2005), "Under the skin", The Guardian.
  37. ↑ Asana Greenstreet (3 July 2012), "Jenny Saville at Modern Art Oxford", Aesthetica Magazine.
  38. ↑ "Jenny Saville: Migrants, 555 West 24th Street, New York, April 5–May 3, 2003". Gagosian. 14 September 2020. Retrieved 2 April 2026.
  39. ↑ "Evening Standard Website". 23 August 2012. Retrieved 21 October 2015.
  40. ↑ "Modern Art Oxford website shop exhibition poster Jenny Saville 2012". Archived from the original on 6 March 2022. Retrieved 21 October 2015.
  41. ↑ "Ashmolean Museum exhibition Titian to Canaletto Jenny Saville Drawing". Ashmolean website. Retrieved 21 October 2015.
  42. ↑ "Jenny Saville – April 14 – July 9, 2016". Gagosian. Archived from the original on 5 October 2016. Retrieved 5 October 2016.
  43. ↑ "Jason Rosenfeld, Jenny Saville: Ancestors | Gagosian Gallery". brooklynrail.org. 5 June 2018. Retrieved 23 July 2018.
  44. ↑ "Jenny Saville: Ancestors, West 21st Street, New York, May 3–July 23, 2018". Gagosian. 2 September 2018. Retrieved 2 April 2026.
  45. ↑ "Jenny Saville". The George Economou Collection. Retrieved 2 April 2026.
  46. ↑ "Jenny Saville: The Anatomy of Painting - National Portrait Gallery". www.npg.org.uk. Retrieved 19 June 2025.
  47. ↑ "Jenny Saville: The Anatomy of Painting | Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth". www.themodern.org. Retrieved 18 October 2025.
  48. ↑ "Jenny Saville". The ALBERTINA Museum Vienna. Retrieved 19 November 2025.
  49. ↑ "Jenny Saville a Ca' Pesaro | Museum Exhibitions | News". Gagosian. 2 April 2026. Retrieved 2 April 2026.
  50. ↑ George Nelson (13 November 2025). "Jenny Saville's 2026 Solo Exhibition in Venice will Be Her Fourth Museum Show in 18 Months". ART News.
  51. ↑ "Exhibition. Jenny Saville a Ca' Pesaro". Ca' Pesaro. Retrieved 28 March 2026.
  52. ↑ Sawa, Dale Berning (25 March 2018). "Tacita Dean and Jenny Saville lead strong female presence at Edinburgh art festival". The Guardian. Retrieved 30 March 2018.
  53. ↑ Daniel Cassady (16 November 2022), Gagosian Forms Star-Studded Board of Directors, Offering a Glimpse at the Gallery’s Future ARTnews.

Sources

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  • Jenny Saville, Organized by Cheryl Brutvan, Texts by Cheryl Brutvan and Nicholas Cullinan, Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, Florida, 2011.
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