Jenny Saville

The Anatomy of Painting

Jenny Saville is one of the world's foremost contemporary painters who rose to prominence in the early 1990s following her acclaimed degree show at the Glasgow School of Art.

In subsequent years she has played a leading role in the reinvigoration of figurative painting - a genre that she continues to test to the limits. Her ability to create visceral portraits from various layers of paint reveals an artist with a deep passion for the painting process itself, an act that she experiences as energetic and bodily but is underpinned by the traditions of a long history of painting.

This broadly chronological exhibition traces the development of her practice bringing together key artworks from her career while exploring her lasting connection to art history. From charcoal drawings to large-scale oil paintings of the human form, Saville's work explores what it means to be human.

All works in the exhibition are by Jenny Saville

Hyphen

Oil on canvas, 1999

Private Collection courtesy Gagosian

Hyphen was exhibited in Territories, Saville's first solo exhibition in New York. The exhibition's title references the large-scale paintings, which looked at landscapes of the flesh. Hyphen is a double-portrait of the painter and her sister. Saville has stated that she is drawn to the central pivot created by the two heads nestled together.

The artist used a palette of fleshy pinks to create one, convincing body mass. The paint was applied in large brush strokes and Saville used a scraper to pull the paint up onto the cheek. Areas of raw, stained canvas can be seen within the paint surface, which hint at the explorations of painting she would develop in the following years.

Ruben's Flap

Oil on canvas, 1998-1999

The George Economou Collection

interfacing

Oil on canvas, 1992

Arora Collection, UK

Propped

Oil on canvas, 1992

Private Collection (on opposite wall)

A woman sits perched on a stool, wearing only a pair of silk, slip-on shoes. Her pose conveys strength and vulnerability; her fingernails, like the claws of a bird, dig into her thighs. Propped was originally displayed facing a mirror. The text is from an essay by the French feminist writer, Luce Irigaray, and begins: 'if we continue to speak in this sameness - speak as men have spoken for centuries, we will fail each other.

Saville considers this painting to be one of her most succinct early works because of the clarity of its composition. Although it could be regarded as a self-portrait, Saville has resisted this definition, preferring to think of it as loaning her body to herself.

Propped was one of the paintings Saville exhibited in her graduation show at Glasgow School of Art. Shortly afterwards, the painting appeared on the front cover of The Times Saturday Review and was purchased by the art collector, Charles Saatchi.

Hear exhibition curator Sarah

Howgate introduce the exhibition, on Bloomberg Connects.

Timeline

1970s

1970

Jenny Saville born, Cambridge

1980s

1980s-90s

Saville makes several visits to Venice, draws the Rialto fish market and views Titian's Assumption of the Virgin altarpiece in the Basilica Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, which makes a lasting impression

1988-92

Studies painting and drawing at the Glasgow School of Art

1990s

1990

First public showing of an artwork by Saville at the Burrell Collection in Glasgow in a self-portrait competition

Exhibits in the BP Portrait Award at the National Portrait Gallery (also exhibits in 1991)

1991

Scholarship to the University of Cincinnati: attends art classes and takes courses in Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies.

Saville visits the museums in Washington

DC and New York and sees Willem de Kooning's paintings for the first time

1992

Graduates and wins the Newberry Medal for her degree exhibition. Charles Saatchi

buys the work exhibited and commissions her to make new work for his London gallery for the next two years.

Who else was going to give a 22-year-old a huge gallery and say with encouragement

"yes make a 21 foot triptych"... I was lucky to be part of that generation and given such a platform.

1994

Young British Art IlI at the Saatchi Gallery, London exhibits seven of Saville's paintings including, Propped, Interfacing, Plan and Trace. Saville meets art historian, curator and critic, David Sylvester.

Awarded Susan Kasen Summer Fellowship, Connecticut. Observes plastic surgery operations in New York.

1995

Sees Willem de Kooning: Paintings at Tate, curated by David Sylvester. Saville describes de Kooning as a 'game changer.

1997

Sensation: Young British Artists from the Saatchi Collection at the Royal Academy of Arts, London. Propped, Trace, Plan, Hybrid and Shift are exhibited.

1999

Sensation opens at the Brooklyn Museum and Saville has her first one-person show, Territories, in New York at Gagosian Gallery

2000s

Gallery, paintings

2000

Saville exhibits in Painting The Century: 101 Portrait Masterpieces 1900-2000 at the National Portrait

Gallery, representing the year 1992 with Branded.

2001

Saville visits de Kooning's studio in the Hamptons

2003

Saville's exhibition Migrants opens in New York at Gagosian Gallery

2005

Jenny Saville exhibition at the Museo d'Arte Contemporanea Roma (MACRO) in Rome

2010s

2011-12

Jenny Saville exhibition at the Norton Museum of Art, Florida and the Ashmolean Museum and Modern Art, Oxford

2015

Saville curates a room in Rubens and his Legacy at the Royal Academy of Arts, London NOW: Jenny Saville, a survey of 25 years of work, Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh

Jenny Saville, The George Economou Collection, Athens.

2020s

2021

Saville views Titian's Assumption of the Virgin altarpiece from scaffolding in the Basilica di Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari during a restoration project

September 2021 - February 2022

Jenny Saville exhibition in Florence, is a dialogue between Saville and the art and artists of the Italian

Renaissance including Michelangelo;

Museo Novecento, Museo degli

Innocenti, Museo di Casa Buonarotti,

Museo di Palazzo Vecchio and the

Museo dell'Opera del Duomo

2025

Gaze, an exhibition of Saville's work produced in the last 20 years, the Albertina, Vienna

Trace

Oil on canvas, 1993

Tate: Presented by Larry Gagosian (Tate Americas Foundation) 2023

Self Portrait (after Rembrandt)

Oil on paper, 2019

Private Collection courtesy Gagosian

Shadow Head

Oil on canvas, 2007-2013

Collection Glenn and Amanda Fuhrman NY,

Courtesy the FLAG Art Foundation

Red Stare Head II

Oil on canvas, 2007-2011

Private Collection

Witness

Oil on canvas, 2009

The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Gift of Martin Sosnoff, 2015.407

Red Stare Head IV

Oil on canvas, 2006-2011

Private Collection

Bleach

Oil on canvas, 2008

Collection of Lisa and Steven Tananbaum

Reverse

Oil on canvas, 2002-2003

Private Collection courtesy Gagosian

In Reverse, Saville continues her profound and intimate exploration of portraiture by confronting viewers with raw physicality and emotional intricacies.

This large-scale close crop self-portrait depicts layers of flesh and form. The title alludes to the physical orientation of the head, altering our usual perception of where we expect to see a mouth, eyes and nose in a portrait. By reversing or changing the position of the features, it helps us see the portrait anew.

Developing her own vocabulary of techniques, by using blurred abstract brushstrokes and layered sculptural marks, Saville creates movement and energy. She describes this as enabling her 'to charge the paint with sculptural force' which 'embeds an inner tension and life force to the painting?

Rosetta II

Oil on paper, mounted on board, 2005-2006

Private Collection

Unlike many of Saville's paintings of heads during this period, the gaze is not directed at the viewer. The artist has commented that she hopes the painting calls to mind the classical idea of the mysticism of a blind person's stare' and cites Picasso's painting La Celestina as an influence.

Saville described how she created a sense of movement in the painting: I threw tinted primer to make a splash up the right side of her cheek, so when I built the ear to the right of that there was a combination of painting techniques with different dynamics of movement?

Stare

Oil on canvas, 2004-2005

The Broad Art Foundation

Stare is derived from a small image of a young woman with a port-wine birthmark on her face, which the painter found in a medical book. Saville created a series of works based on this photograph to explore the possibilities of painting through colour and mark making, without losing the vulnerabilities and strengths of the sitter.

By working on a large scale, and in layers of paint, Saville imbues the Stare series with a sense of volume and weight that is almost sculptural. Intense darks, pinks, reds, and blues emerge through a base of pale skin tones.

The landscape of the face is rendered using dynamic brush marks and paint splatters, which at times verge on abstraction while also being highly controlled in building the form.

Saville explains: 'I enjoy making one colour run through another to create multiple nuanced tones - out of making something from nothing

Hear artist Jenny Saville reflect on her work, on Bloomberg Connects.

Digging (Study) II

Graphite on toned board, 2015

Private Collection

Mother and Child Study II

Pencil on vellum, 2009

Private Collection

Study for Pentimenti IV (after Michelangelo's Virgin and Child)

Charcoal and pastel on paper, 2011

Casa MER, Madrid, Segovia (Spain)

Study for Pentimenti III (sinopia)

Charcoal and pastel on paper, 2011

Private Collection

Study of Arms II: A response to Titian's

'Study of a Young Woman', Uffizi, Florence Charcoal and pastel on tinted acrylic ground on watercolor paper, 2015

The Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford.

Presented by the artist, Jenny Saville, 2016.

The Mothers

Oil and charcoal on canvas, 2011

Collection of Lisa and Steven Tananbaum

Saville is one of the few female artists to address with such directness the theme of the intimate relationship between mother and child. There is a new-found gentleness in this series of works and Saville has reflected that she found making beautiful, tender paintings and drawings interesting.

Some of the works in this room take inspiration from ancient fertility sculpture, pen and ink drawings by Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669) and Renaissance nativity scenes, as well as the artist's own experience of, and deep love for, the full range of a child's emotion and movement.

Around the time of The Mothers, the artist made work in charcoal and pastel, as well as oil paint.

Drawing allowed her to create dynamic tangles of lines suggesting the movement of bodies and offered a type of layering that helped embed memory into the paper and raw canvas.

Interlocking Figures Study

Charcoal and pastel on paper, 2019-2021 The Morgan Library & Museum, New York

Figures on Box Lid Study

Pastel and pencil on cardboard, 2018

Roman Family Collection

Couples Study

Pastel and charcoal on paper, 2016-2021

Private Collection

Compass

Charcoal and pastel on paper mounted on board, 2013

Private Collection

Here, we see Saville shift from depicting single figures to multiple figures. Created using charcoal and pastels, this technique of drawing allows Saville to generate hybrid figures. The layering of bodies appears transparent, especially around the exterior mass of flesh, which blends with the grey, muted tonal background. Saville says: I built the figures thinking about sculptural form. It's an organic process, developing one figure after another until the mass of humans have a solidity. It's one of my favourite ways of working..

Out of one, two (symposium)

Charcoal and pastel on canvas, 2016

Private Collection

Continue to Part 2

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