George Condo

George Condo was born in Concord, New Hampshire in 1957. He studied Art History and Music Theory at the University of Massachusetts in Lowell. He has occupied a prominent position in the art world for close to three decades. Condo’s art can be viewed as a multi-layered experience incorporating art historical references ranging from European classicism to American contemporary culture, often combining elements of each to achieve a unique vision informed by all its sources. In his New Yorker profile on the artist, Calvin Tomkins observed that “instead of borrowing images or styles, [Condo] used the language of his predecessors, their methods and techniques, and applied them to subjects they would never have painted.” Speaking of Condo’s influence on the generations that have followed him, Laura Hoptman, curator in the Department of Painting and Sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art stated, “George opened the door for artists to use the history of painting in a way that was not appropriation.” Condo’s work was recently the feature of a museum-wide exhibition, ‘Confrontation’, at the Berggruen Museum, Berlin. The Phillips Collection, Washington D.C. opened a major survey of drawings and “drawing paintings” titled ‘The Way I Think’ (March 11–June 25, 2017). The exhibition travels to the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk in 2017-18.