| Jeff Koons | |
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Birthdate |
January 25, 1955 |
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Birthplace |
York, Pennsylvania, USA |
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Death date |
--- |
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Movement |
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Jeff Koons is an American artist. He is well-known for his modern reproductions of ordinary objects, such as flowers, dogs, and cars.
Early Life[]
Jeff Koons was born in York, Pennsylvania. He studied painting at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Maryland Institute College of Art. His main influence was Salvador Dali, and he even went to the extent of visiting Dali at his hotel. He was also influenced greatly by Ed Paschke, an artist who he met at the Art Institute.
Career[]
Koons first gained recognition in the mid 1980s, when he set up a studio in SoHo. The studio has thirty assistants, all of which were responsible for manufacturing a certain part of his work. All of his work has been made within "series". His first well-known series, Pre-New, consisted of household objects attached to light fixtures. His later series, New, consisted of vaccuum cleaners. His series, Equilibrium consisted of three basketballs floating directly in the middle of a tank of water.
Later series included the Statuary Series, which was famously the series of Rabbit, an inflatable toy rabbit cast in metal.
Puppy was one of his most famous works-- it was a large dog topiary sculpture made of a variety of colorful flowers. It was disassembled and reassembled in Sydney, where it is now much more efficient when it comes to surviving and blooming.
His Celebration series, which was conceived in 1994, is one of his most famous. It included many of his usual banal objects made with stainless steel, mirror-finished surfaces. Each sculpture comes in twenty different colors.
In 2010, a car that he had designed and painted was revealed to the public at the Pompidou Center in Paris. It completed the 24 Hours of Le Mans race.
Personal Life[]
Jeff Koons has two children--a daughter, born when he was in college and given away for adoption (but later reunited), and a son, Ludwig, born in 1992, from his ex-wife Cicciolina, an Italian porn star and member of Parliament (they were married from 1991-1998). He is now married to Justine Wheeler, an artist and former employee of his studio.
Gallery[]
