Emotions and forms: Tony Cragg exhibition at the Hermitage. Tony Cragg is one of the most famous modern sculptors. Tony Cragg exhibition in the Hermitage

Tony Cragg Photo by Mart Engelena

"Elliptical Column", Germany, 2012

Tony Cragg - British sculptor, one of the recognized classics contemporary art. He began as an artist in the 1970s, successfully joining the then popular movement of minimalism and conceptual art. “The original interest that inspired me to create images and objects was - and still remains - the creation of objects that do not exist in the natural or functional world, which can reflect and convey information and sensations from the world and my own existence,” emphasized Cragg in 1985, early in his career.

The main theme of the artist’s research is the existence of sculpture outside of design, outside the vicissitudes of the museum and gallery world, outside the art market. He is trying to figure out how independent a work of art can be and whether it can be useful.

"False idols", Germany, 2011Photo © Tony Cragg Studio, Fondazione Berengo

"Monastery", Germany, 1988Photo © Tony Cragg Studio, Fondazione Berengo

During his career, Tony Cragg held more than 250 solo exhibitions in leading museums and galleries in Europe, America, Asia and Australia, including the Louvre, Paris; Tate Gallery, Liverpool; National Museum contemporary art, Seoul; Museum of Contemporary Art MACRO, Rome, and others. Now he has reached Russia. Finally, the master’s work in such a volume can be seen in our country.

Exhibition “Tony Cragg. Sculpture and Drawings” is organized with the participation of the Berengo Foundation and with the support of the Falconeri brand, Italy. The exhibition will feature 55 works, including sculpture and drawings from different years. You will be able to see both the master’s classic compositions (“Monastery” and “Absolutely Omnivore”), as well as new glass works and graphic works of the last two decades. It is worth noting that the exhibition project was prepared by the artist specifically for State Hermitage.

The exhibition features 55 works, including sculpture and drawings from different years: the already classic compositions “Monastery” and “Absolutely Omnivore”, new glass works and graphic works of the last two decades. The exhibition project was prepared by the artist specifically for the State Hermitage.

Tony Cragg (b. 1949) is a British sculptor, one of the recognized classics of modern art. In 1977 he moved to the city of Wuppertal (Germany), where he currently lives and works. In 2008, the Tony Cragg Sculpture Park was opened near Wuppertal.

Tony Cragg began as an artist in the 1970s, riding the wave of minimalism and conceptual art. His first works are monumental compositions made from household waste. Subsequently, the artist turned to studying the properties of form and surface, experimenting with the most various materials- from traditional wood, stone and metal, to the less expected sculptures of Kevlar (the new bulletproof material from which Airbuses are made), rubber and plastic. “The original interest that inspired me to create images and objects was - and still remains - the creation of objects that do not exist in the natural or functional world, which can reflect and convey information and sensations from the world and my own existence,” emphasized Cragg in 1985.

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In his works, the sculptor turns to the most complex study of the existence of sculpture - outside of design, outside of the vicissitudes of the museum and gallery world, outside of the art market. He is interested in sculpture beyond its suitability, applicability, usefulness and usefulness. The infinity of the logical variability of its forms is one of the main themes of his research. The artist never ceases to admire the human ability to realize one’s earthly existence and reflect on it. In his understanding, sculpture is a kind of response to such thinking.

Cragg's drawings have a different, rather auxiliary, status. They prepare the birth of the sculpture, look for support for it and outline the existential justification at the formal level. The drawings are inseparable from the sculptures and strangely live by their plastic laws. The abstract forms drawn here are fraught with real, and therefore materialized objects.

From 1979 to 2016, Tony Cragg held more than 250 solo exhibitions in leading museums and galleries in Europe, America, Asia and Australia, including the Louvre, Paris; Tate Gallery, Liverpool; National Museum of Modern Art, Seoul; Museum of Contemporary Art MACRO, Rome, and others.

Tony Cragg is the winner of the world's most prestigious art prize, the Turner Prize, and many other prizes and awards, he is a laureate of the Order of the British Empire, 2nd class (the last rank before the title of Sir), an honorary Chevalier of Arts and Letters (France), a member of the Royal Academy of Arts (London), Shakespeare Prize laureate, member of the Academy of Arts (Berlin), professor at the University of the Arts in Berlin.

The artist will arrive in St. Petersburg with his team to install and open the exhibition in the Hermitage.

In the summer of 2012, as part of the “Sculpture in the Courtyard” program, Tony Cragg’s work “Hatch” was shown in the Great Courtyard of the Winter Palace.

Curator of the exhibition: Tony Cragg. Sculpture and drawings” - Dmitry Ozerkov, Head of the Department of Contemporary Art of the State Hermitage, Candidate of Philosophical Sciences. A scientific illustrated catalog has been prepared for the exhibition, the author of the text is D. Yu. Ozerkov.

A large educational program has been prepared for the exhibition, including a lecture by Tony Cragg, master classes and round tables.

Falconeri is an Italian brand with extensive experience in the production of knitted clothing from natural materials for men and women with refined taste. The collections use yarn from the very high quality; It is used to create versatile and extremely comfortable wardrobe items, the perfection of which is visible in every detail - a combination of sophisticated beauty and elegance. From sketches to quality control, from knitting to packaging, every stage of production is carried out in the Italian factory in Avio. The combination of affordable prices and high quality products is combined with great attention to detail and continuous improvement of technology in the best traditions of “Made in Italy”. Falconeri, which has over 80 stores around the world, entered the Russian market in 2011. Today, clothes of this brand are sold in 11 stores located in three large Russian cities - Moscow, St. Petersburg and Rostov-on-Don. Falconeri has always been close in spirit to the world of art. Recently, this Italian brand sponsored the Taormina Film Festival and a major exhibition of works by Paolo Veronese at the Gran Guardia Palace in Verona.

La Fondazione Berengo. Fondazione Berengo is an independent cultural organization created by Adriano Berengo. Its goal is to promote glass as a material in contemporary art, design and architecture, and to preserve centuries-old traditions Venice and Murano. Fondazione Berengo also contributes to education, together with art schools and other institutions, offering courses for glass artists, as well as internships for students to realize their creative ideas using a traditional glass furnace. Fondazione Berengo became one of the sponsors of Glasstress 2015 Gotika - the 56th Venice Biennale, as well as a joint project of Berengo Studio and the State Hermitage.

The State Hermitage begins this spring with Tony Cragg, one of the founders of the New British Sculpture movement and a man who is welcomed with open arms by any museum, gallery and art fair. After more than 250 personal exhibitions in different corners planet (and Moscow, which brilliantly took place at the Central House of Artists in 2005), he finally made it to the main St. Petersburg museum.

Appreciate the work done specifically for the Hermitage

Exhibition “Tony Cragg. Sculpture and Drawings” was prepared by the artist specifically for St. Petersburg with the participation of the Berengo Foundation and the support of the Italian brand Falconeri. It includes works from different years, which have already become classics, such as the compositions “Monastery” and “Absolutely Omnivorous”, and completely new ones, made of glass. In addition, the General Staff Building will feature graphic works from the last two decades, which are much less well known compared to Cragg's flowing sculptures.

Keep up to date with the Hermitage 20/21 project

With the opening of the General Staff Building, the State Hermitage became closely involved in contemporary art: after the exhibition of the Chapman brothers, the Manifesto biennale, as well as other events related to this area, the Tony Cragg exhibition becomes a logical continuation of the course taken by the museum. It is included in the Hermitage 20/21 project, designed to collect, exhibit and study the art of the 20th–21st centuries. Ekov, and its curator was Dmitry Ozerkov, head of the Department of Contemporary Art of the State Hermitage, candidate of philosophical sciences.

Tony Cragg

Find out more about the artist

In addition to the fact that Tony Cragg is a Turner Prize winner and one of the most expensive modern sculptors, you will learn about his early commitment to minimalism and conceptual art, about the first works from household waste, the Sculpture Park near Wuppertal, where he has lived and worked since the late seventies, as well as about the peculiarities of his artistic taste and worldview.

Attend a lecture by Tony Cragg

Anyone who is already familiar with the sculptor’s work first-hand will be doubly interested in attending his lecture dedicated to the exhibition, as well as master classes and round tables. We follow the dates of events on the official website of the museum.

Get inspired

The poetic floating forms for which Tony Cragg's work is famous reflect his interest in sculpture freed from the concepts of "suitability", "applicability", "usefulness" and "utility". The artist admires the human ability to recognize and reflect on one’s earthly existence, and this has always been the case. As early as 1985, Cragg emphasized that he was primarily interested in objects that do not exist in the natural or functional world, those that can convey his feelings about the world and his own existence.

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On March 1, 2016, the exhibition “Tony Cragg. Sculpture and Drawings”, prepared by the Department of Contemporary Art of the State Hermitage as part of the “Hermitage 20/21” project, designed to collect, exhibit, and study the art of the 20th-21st centuries. Ekov. The exhibition is organized with the participation of the Berengo Foundation and with the support of the Falconeri brand, Italy.

The exhibition features 55 works, including sculpture and drawings from different years: the already classic compositions “Monastery” and “Absolutely Omnivore”, new glass works and graphic works of the last two decades. The exhibition project was prepared by the artist specifically for the State Hermitage.

Tony Cragg (b. 1949) is a British sculptor, one of the recognized classics of modern art. In 1977 he moved to the city of Wuppertal (Germany), where he currently lives and works. In 2008, the Tony Cragg Sculpture Park was opened near Wuppertal.

Tony Cragg began as an artist in the 1970s, riding the wave of minimalism and conceptual art. His first works are monumental compositions made from household waste. Subsequently, the artist turned to exploring the properties of form and surface, experimenting with a variety of materials - from traditional wood, stone and metal, to the little expected in sculpture of Kevlar (a new bulletproof material from which airbuses are made), rubber and plastic. “The original interest that inspired me to create images and objects was - and still remains - the creation of objects that do not exist in the natural or functional world, which can reflect and convey information and sensations from the world and my own existence,” emphasized Cragg in 1985.

In his works, the sculptor turns to the most complex study of the existence of sculpture - outside of design, outside of the vicissitudes of the museum and gallery world, outside of the art market. He is interested in sculpture beyond its suitability, applicability, usefulness and usefulness. The infinity of the logical variability of its forms is one of the main themes of his research. The artist never ceases to admire the human ability to realize one’s earthly existence and reflect on it. In his understanding, sculpture is a kind of response to such thinking.

Cragg's drawings have a different, rather auxiliary, status. They prepare the birth of the sculpture, look for support for it and outline the existential justification at the formal level. The drawings are inseparable from the sculptures and strangely live by their plastic laws. The abstract forms drawn here are fraught with real, and therefore materialized objects.

From 1979 to 2016, Tony Cragg held more than 250 solo exhibitions in leading museums and galleries in Europe, America, Asia and Australia, including the Louvre, Paris; Tate Gallery, Liverpool; National Museum of Modern Art, Seoul; Museum of Contemporary Art MACRO, Rome, and others.

Tony Cragg is the winner of the world's most prestigious art prize, the Turner Prize, many other prizes and awards, he is a laureate of the Order of the British Empire, 2nd class (the last rank before the title of Sir), an honorary Chevalier of Arts and Letters (France), a member of the Royal Academy of Arts (London), Shakespeare Prize laureate, member of the Academy of Arts (Berlin), professor at the University of the Arts in Berlin.

The artist will arrive in St. Petersburg with his team to install and open the exhibition in the Hermitage.

In the summer of 2012, as part of the “Sculpture in the Courtyard” program, Tony Cragg’s work “Hatch” was shown in the Great Courtyard of the Winter Palace.

Curator of the exhibition: Tony Cragg. Sculpture and drawings” - Dmitry Ozerkov, head of the Department of Contemporary Art of the State Hermitage, candidate of philosophical sciences. A scientific illustrated catalog has been prepared for the exhibition, the author of the text is D. Yu. Ozerkov.

A large educational program has been prepared for the exhibition, including a lecture by Tony Cragg, master classes and round tables.

Falconeri is an Italian brand with extensive experience in the production of knitted clothing from natural materials for men and women with refined taste. The collections use the highest quality yarn; It is used to create versatile and extremely comfortable wardrobe items, the perfection of which is visible in every detail - a combination of sophisticated beauty and elegance. From sketches to quality control, from knitting to packaging, every stage of production is carried out in the Italian factory in Avio. The combination of affordable prices and high quality products is combined with great attention to detail and continuous improvement of technology in the best traditions of “Made in Italy”. Falconeri, which has over 80 stores around the world, entered the Russian market in 2011. Today, clothes of this brand are sold in 11 stores located in three large Russian cities - Moscow, St. Petersburg and Rostov-on-Don. Falconeri has always been close in spirit to the world of art. Recently, this Italian brand sponsored the Taormina Film Festival and a major exhibition of works by Paolo Veronese at the Gran Guardia Palace in Verona.

La Fondazione Berengo. Fondazione Berengo is an independent cultural organization created by Adriano Berengo. Its goal is to promote glass as a material in contemporary art, design and architecture, as well as to preserve the centuries-old traditions of Venice and Murano. Fondazione Berengo also contributes to education, together with art schools and other institutions, offering courses for glass artists, as well as internships for students to realize their creative ideas using a traditional glass furnace. Fondazione Berengo became one of the sponsors of Glasstress 2015 Gotika - the 56th Venice Biennale, as well as a joint project of Berengo Studio and the State Hermitage.

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In St. Petersburg, in the halls of the General Staff of the State Hermitage, the exhibition “Tony Cragg. Sculpture and drawings."

In three halls, 55 works by the famous British sculptor are exhibited, executed in different years from the early 80s of the last century to recent years in different materials - wood, stone, glass, metal, plastic. Among those presented in the Hermitage are garden and street sculptures, small plastic, sketches and pre-design drawings. The entire exhibition was invented and designed by the sculptor himself specifically for the Hermitage, and this is not a repetition of any of his previous exhibitions, but original idea for the halls of the General Staff.

Tony Cragg has long been recognized as a classic of modernism, he is one of the most famous modern sculptors. Cragg was born in Liverpool, the son of an aircraft manufacturing engineer, and his first education was as a chemist, specialist in the field of rubber production. But, not having worked in chemical production for even two years, I got carried away artistic creativity and began studying art on courses at the Gloucestershire College of Art and Design in Cheltenham, then, in the early 70s, at Wimbledon School of Art, and completed his education at the Royal College of Art. His first and main teacher was Roger Ackling: he introduced Cragg to the sculptors Richard Long and Bill Woodrow. After King's College, Cragg left England and has since lived and worked in Germany. A park of his sculptures has been open near Wuppertal since 2008. Since 2009 he has been elected rector of the Düsseldorf Academy of Arts.

Since the mid-80s, Cragg has been interested in experimenting with different materials and forms: he used plastics and ornamental materials, created designs from ready-made furniture elements, fabrics, and later, from the late 90s, he turned to more traditional materials - bronze, glass, marble wood. For the exhibition in St. Petersburg, Tony Cragg presented works from all periods of his creative life.

As the curators of the exhibition, Dmitry Ozerkov, head of the Hermitage’s Department of Contemporary Art, and Nadezhda Sinyutina told Art Knot, Cragg specially came to St. Petersburg to study the interiors of the General Staff Building, and then spoke about his vision of the future exhibition. They first listened to the master’s proposals, understood what he wanted to say with his composition, and then clarified the details. In particular, Cragg really wanted to install two more sculptures in the halls, very massive and heavy, but the curators managed to dissuade the master from this idea - so that the historical ceilings of the building would not be damaged.

“He arranged these sculptures himself,” says Dmitry Ozerkov. – And the whole composition works like an orchestra - height, distances, turns - a polyphony of sounds and images arises, it’s like a total installation by Kabakov. At first he wanted to put in the center of the large hall a large figure resembling a giant mushroom, then settled on a metal, spiral-shaped sculpture that amazingly holds the entire composition. We ourselves would never arrange it this way; it is comparable to the tuning of instruments in an orchestra, which is fully heard by only one person - the conductor.

The exhibition, according to the curators, is not only based on the idea of ​​a complete retrospective, although works from the earliest to the most recent are presented here. But they were also driven by the desire to show creative path Tony Cragg in its entirety: the entire set of materials and forms (from the classic “Monastery”, made from metal parts of some large machines to fragile glass) that the sculptor used in his works, and present to the Russian audience a complete overview of the work of one of the leading masters of modern European sculpture.

This exhibition is also important for us because we are not just presenting the works of a recognized classic of modernism,” says Dmitry Ozerkov. – Tony Cragg is a real living sculptor, he is a theorist, a practitioner, and a teacher, he is a unique figure in modern European art.

A significant part of the exhibition is occupied by Cragg's works made of glass: these are compositions from ready-made objects - glasses, vases, bottles made of thin transparent greenish glass. These are unusual figures, reminiscent of fantastic chemical vessels, and a three-dimensional self-portrait of the sculptor himself, created from dark brown glass. A large series is presented next to the finished products pencil drawings Tony Cragg - his pre-design sketches, sketches of future objects, graphic images of the internal structure of glass that has undergone heat treatment. By the way, speaking about his work, Cragg always repeats how important it is for a sculptor and any creator in the field of modern fine arts ability to draw.

Exhibition “Tony Cragg. Sculpture and Drawings” will last in the halls of the General Staff of the Hermitage until May 7.