Born in London in 1950, Antony Gormley studied Archaeology, Anthropology, and Art History at Trinity College, Cambridge (1968-1971), before travelling to India and Sri Lanka to learn more about Buddhism, remaining there until 1974. On his return to England, he enrolled at St Martin’s School of Art and Goldsmith’s College, London (1974-1977), and completed his studies with a postgraduate course in Sculpture at the Stade School of Fine Art (1977-1979). Gormley’s work has always been centred around the figure, investigating the relationship of the human body to space. His sculptures are largely cast, using his own body to create molds. His pieces critically engage with the human form in a way that ‘confronts fundamental questions of where human beings stand in relation to nature and the cosmos’, and Gormley continually tries to identify the space of art as a place of becoming in which new behaviours, thoughts and feelings can arise. Since his first solo exhibition, at the Whitechapel Gallery in 1981, Gormley has exhibited all over the world. He is perhaps best known for his major public works such as the colossal Angel of the North (Gateshead, England), or Chord (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA). Gormley was awarded the Turner Prize in 1994, the South Bank Prize for Visual Art in 1999, the Bernhard Heiliger Award for Sculpture in 2007, the Obayashi Prize in 2012 and the Praemium Imperiale in 2013. In 1997, he was made an OBE and was knighted in the New Year’s Honours list in 2014. He is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects, holds an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Cambridge and is a Fellow of Trinity and Jesus Colleges, Cambridge. Gormley has been a Royal Academician since 2003. Gormley’s sculpture can be found in over 120 public collections worldwide, including the Tate Gallery, London, Uffizi Gallery, Florence, National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.
