JENNY SAVILLE to Ca’ Pesaro

Venice is a place where art is an integral part of everyday life and where the artists of the Biennale engage in dialogue with the great Venetian works of art. It is a great honour to have the opportunity to exhibit in Venice.

Jenny Saville

In the year of the Art Biennale, the Ca' Pesaro International Gallery returns to contemporary voices with an extraordinary exhibition by one of the most important painters of our time, Jenny Saville. This is the first major exhibition of Saville's work in Venice and aims to document its development by retracing her career from its beginnings in the 1990s to the present day.

Born in 1970 in Cambridge, Saville attended the Glasgow School of Art from 1988 to 1992, spending a semester at the University of Cincinnati in 1991. Her figurative paintings have evolved to include contemporary debates about the body with all their social implications and taboos. It was during this trip to America that she discovered the work of New York painters such as Willem de Kooning and Cy Twombly. Parallel to her dialogue with the great masters, ancient sculpture and modern European figurative painting, she became interested in the fundamentals of painting explored by abstract painters.

Belonging to the generation of painters and sculptors who distinguished themselves in the United Kingdom in the late 1980s and early 1990s, often referred to as Young British Artists (YBA), Saville breathed new life into painting.

Venice is a place where art is an integral part of everyday life and where the artists of the Biennale engage in dialogue with the great Venetian works of art. It is a great honour to have the opportunity to exhibit in Venice.

Jenny Saville

In the year of the Art Biennale, the Ca' Pesaro International Gallery returns to contemporary voices with an extraordinary exhibition by one of the most important painters of our time, Jenny Saville. This is the first major exhibition of Saville's work in Venice and aims to document its development by retracing her career from its beginnings in the 1990s to the present day.

Born in 1970 in Cambridge, Saville attended the Glasgow School of Art from 1988 to 1992, spending a semester at the University of Cincinnati in 1991. Her figurative paintings have evolved to include contemporary debates about the body with all their social implications and taboos. It was during this trip to America that she discovered the work of New York painters such as Willem de Kooning and Cy Twombly. Parallel to her dialogue with the great masters, ancient sculpture and modern European figurative painting, she became interested in the fundamentals of painting explored by abstract painters.

Belonging to the generation of painters and sculptors who distinguished themselves in the United Kingdom in the late 1980s and early 1990s, often referred to as Young British Artists (YBA), Saville breathed new life into painting.