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Michael Craig-Martin, Untitled (pink baby bottle), 2015

Acrylic on aluminum, 23 ⅝ × 23 ⅝ inches (60 × 60 cm)
© Michael Craig-Martin, photo by Mike Bruce Michael Craig-Martin, Untitled (corkscrew), 2012

Acrylic on aluminum, 48 × 48 inches (122 × 122 cm) Michael Craig-Martin Pitchfork (pink), 2008

Powder-coated steel 137 3/4 × 22 inches (350 × 56 cm) Edition of 3 + 1 AP Installation at Chatsworth House, Derbyshire, UK Artwork © Michael Craig-Martin Michael Craig-Martin, Scissors (Wallpaper-Aqua), 2004

Acrylic on aluminum panel, 32 × 33 inches (81.3 × 83.8 cm)
 A principal figure of British conceptual art, Michael Craig-Martin probes the relationship between objects and images, harnessing the human capacity to imagine absent forms through symbols and pictures. The perceptual tension between object, representation, and language has been his central concern over the past four decades. In his early work Craig-Martin often incorporated readymades into sculpture and made knowing reference to American Minimalism. His elegant restraint and conceptual clarity is exemplified by An Oak Tree (1973), comprising a glass of water on a shelf and a text written by him asserting that the glass of water is, in fact, an oak tree. This interest in semantics, the play between rhetoric and object, continues to be a core theme in his work. In the 1990s Craig-Martin made a decisive shift to painting and developed his hallmark style of precise, bold outlines demarcating flat planes of intensely vibrant colors. Through exacting draftsmanship, he uses composition to explore spatial relationships by juxtaposing and layering color.

Craig-Martin was born in 1941 in Dublin. He attended Fordham University, New York, from 1959 to 1961, then Yale University, where he received a BA in 1963 and an MFA in 1966. In the mid-1960s he returned to Europe, becoming one of the key figures in the first generation of British conceptual artists. Craig-Martin taught at Goldsmiths College School of Art, London, from 1974 to 1988 and from 1994 to 2000. During this time he became a powerful influence on a generation of his students who would become known as the Young British Artists, including Gary Hume, Sarah Lucas, and Damien Hirst, among others. Craig-Martin’s work has been featured in solo museum exhibitions worldwide, including Always Now, Kunstverein Hannover, Germany (1998); Institut Valencià d’Art Modern, Spain (2000); Living, Museu de Arte Moderna–Colecção Berardo, Sintra, Portugal (2001); Arp Museum, Remagen, Germany (2005); Le Magasin–Centre National d’Art Contemporain, Grenoble, France (2006); Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (2006–07); Signs of Life, Kunsthaus Bregenz, Austria (2006); New Art Centre, Roche Court, England (2006, 2011); Goss-Michael Foundation, Dallas (2010, 2015); Rugby Art Gallery and Museum, England (2012); Less Is Still More, Museum Haus Esters, Krefeld, Germany (2013); Chatsworth House, England (2014); and NOW, Shanghai Himalayas Museum (2015, traveled to Hubei Museum of Art, Wuhan, China). Craig-Martin’s work is featured in various public collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Tate, London; Centre Pompidou, Paris; and Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid. Craig-Martin was an artist trustee of Tate from 1989 to 1999, and was elected to the Royal Academy in 2006. In 2016 he was knighted in the Queen’s Birthday Honours for his services to art.

Craig-Martin lives and works in London. Photo: Caroline True



Selected exhibition history
Selected bibliography 
June 12–August 16, 2014
 


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 Public Installation


CityPlace, West Palm Beach, Florida

Michael Craig-Martin has transformed the exterior of a former Macy’s with his largest mural to date, Palm Beach Parade. The retailer abandoned the site earlier this year, and this project aims to transform the struggling shopping center in which the store was situated by putting culture at the forefront.

Michael Craig-Martin, Palm Beach Parade, 2017 © Michael Craig-Martin 
Bloomberg, London

Michael Craig-Martin has created the site-specific work Lexicon (2017) for Bloomberg’s new European headquarters in London. Comprised of twelve parts on three floors of the building, this permanent installation takes everyday objects and enlarges them to a monumental scale.

Michael Craig-Martin, Lexicon, 2017 (detail). Photo: James Newton

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 The Classical Now

March 2–April 28, 2018
King’s College, London

Roy Lichtenstein, Temple, 1964 © Estate of Roy Lichtenstein Michael Craig-Martin in
Folkestone Triennial 2017

September 2–November 5, 2017
Folkestone, England

This exhibition invites artists to engage with the rich cultural history of Folkestone and to exhibit newly commissioned work in public spaces around the town. A new commissioned work by Michael Craig-Martin is included.

Michael Craig-Martin, Folkestone Lightbulb, 2017. Commissioned by the Creative Foundation for Folkestone Triennial 2017. Photo by Thierry Bal Turkish Tulips

July 29–November 5, 2017
The Bowes Museum, Barnard Castle, England

The familiar tulip becomes unfamiliar as its role in history chronicles a greater play. This exhibition brings together works by thirty artists to explore the relationship between Europe and the Middle East. It is a story about migration and about how much is owed to the
East—a land steeped in culture, mathematics, science, and philosophy. This is also a romantic story set
in seventeenth-century Europe,
a fable about social inequality and extravagance. Work by Michael Craig-Martin and Damien Hirst is included.

Michael Craig-Martin, Tulips (after Mapplethorpe), 2016



Artist Michael Craig-Martin Awarded Knighthood In Ceremony By Prince William
Cool, beguiling, Duchampian set of still lives from Michael Craig-Martin at the Serpentine Gallery by Martin Gayford
Going OutExhibitions Michael Craig-Martin and Simon Denny at the Serpentine, exhibition review by Ben Luke
Review: Michael Craig-Martin review – a malevolent graveyard of tech by Adrian Searle
Michael Craig-Martin, Serpentine, review: a modern master is welcomed back from the wilderness by Alastair Sooke
Michael Craig-Martin: ‘I have always thought everything important is right in front of you’ by Tim Adams
Michael Craig-Martin Goes to Dallas by Ann Binlot
The Godfather of British Conceptual Art Comes to Dallas by Nana Asfour
From art school to artist: Michael Craig-Martin by David Kemp
Color you can taste by Timo Chui
Michael Craig-Martin is known as the Godfather of the Young British Artists by Fionnuala McHugh
In the Pink by Jonathan Glancey
Art Newspaper
Review: Michael Craig-Martin, Chatsworth House by Alastair Smart
In My Studio: Michael Craig-Martin by Paul Levy
What is Michael Craig-Martin, the godfather of Brit Art, doing at Chatsworth House? by Mick Brown

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High heels and pink pitchforks adorn Chatsworth house lawns by Mark Brown
Grand Projects
Wild in the Country by Helen Lee
‘Art is poetry, not prose’ by Jackie Wullschlager