In his representations of the human form, Jenny saville transcends the limits of both classical figuration and modern abstraction. She is known for her larger-than-life figurative paintings of nude women, depicted at unusual and distorted angles.
Through oil paint applied in thick layers, his art becomes as visceral as the flesh itself, with each painted mark maintaining a supple and mobile life of its own. In this way, the portraits of him are defined by an exaggerated realism, as he emphasizes the folds of the flesh, the visible veins and the reddened skin.
As Saville pushes, smears, and scrapes pigment onto his large-scale canvases, the distinctions between living, breathing bodies and their painted representations they start to collapse.
Source: new century
Born in 1970 in Cambridge, England, Saville attended the Art school de Glasgow from 1988 to 1992 and spent a period in the University of Cincinnati in 1991.
His studies focused his interest on the "imperfections" of meat, with all its social implications and taboos, and having entered that world, was captivated by these details.
While enjoying a scholarship at Connecticut In 1994, Saville was able to observe the work of a plastic surgeon from the city of NY.
This made him decide to study the reconstruction of human flesh, an element that was formative in his perception of the body, as well as his resistance, and its fragility.
He turned to the study of the seemingly endless ways in which flesh transforms and disfigures. He explored medical pathologies; corpses seen in the morgue; he examined animals and meat; he studied classical and Renaissance sculpture; and watched intertwined couples, mothers with their children, people whose bodies defy gender dichotomies, and more to shape the vision that he would go on to define his work.
As part of Young British Artists (YBA), the motley group of painters and sculptors who rose to prominence in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Saville reinvigorated contemporary figurative painting by challenging the boundaries of the genre and raising questions about society's perception of the body and its potential.
Her works comment on the contemporary obsession with the figure, from emaciated to obese bodies, and as such, her work has been described as embodying a "feminist aesthetic of disgust".
Although looking to the future, his work reveals a deep awareness, both intellectual and sensory, of how the body has been represented throughout time and across cultures, from ancient and Hindu sculpture to drawing and painting of the Renaissance, to the work of modern artists such as Henri Matisse, Willem de Kooning and Pablo Picasso.
Saville's paintings refuse to fit seamlessly into a historical arc; instead, each body steps forward, autonomous, bulky, and always refusing to hide. Saville's precise handling of paint and purposely shortened perspectives underscore the solidity and power of the female form, as well as its inherent vulnerability.
To this day, Jenny, born in 1970, is among the leading contemporary artists whose work has sparked a recent revival of interest in figurative painting.