Born in Bombay in 1954 to an Indian father and an Iraqi Jewish mother, at the age of nineteen, he moved to England, where he still lives and works, to cultivate his passion for art. He draws inspiration from Marcel Duchamp’s "bachelor machines" and, above all, from the works of Paul Neagu, who would become his mentor. From his earliest installations in the 1970s, certain key themes emerge strongly, ones that will characterize his entire artistic journey: the androgynous, that is, the male-female dichotomy, and sexuality. In 1979, a journey to India reconnects him with his roots, leaving him with the awareness of being a sort of border artist, suspended between East and West.
Upon returning to England, Kapoor translates this sentiment into the series 1000 Names, unstable sculptural objects placed on the ground and covered in colored pigments, the same ones sold outside Indian temples for cosmetic or ritual use. These undefined forms, halfway between the natural and the abstract world, belong to bodies in transition, seemingly emerging spontaneously from the material.
In 1980, he exhibits for the first time at Patrice Alexandre’s studio in Paris, and the following year, he holds his first solo show at Coracle Press in London. From that moment on, his original works, blurring the line between two-dimensionality and three-dimensionality, gain increasing recognition, securing him a prominent role in the New British Sculpture movement, alongside other renowned artists such as Cragg, Deacon, Woodrow, and Gormley. If his works of the 1980s are dominated by pure color, softening contours and evoking a sense of boundlessness, the 1990s mark a shift toward increasingly monumental, almost architectural sculptures that explore the concept of emptiness and play with perceptual illusion. "I have made objects in which things are not what they first appear to be," Kapoor says about his artistic exploration. "A stone can lose its weight, or a mirrored object can blend into its surroundings so much that it appears as a hole in space."
Once again, we are faced with intertwining opposites - presence and absence, solidity and intangibility, reality and illusion -. It is up to the viewer to interpret and reconstruct this dichotomy, becoming part of Anish Kapoor’s works. An immersive, unsettling experience with deep emotional impact. Consider, for instance, Madonna (1989 – 1990), an installation in which the viewer stands before an art object attached to the wall by an invisible support, making it appear suspended. It is a circular disk from which an enigmatic, magnetic force seems to emanate: one must approach and extend a hand to determine whether it is a flat or concave shape. In that moment, something irreversible happens. Once the illusion of two-dimensionality is surpassed, the hand penetrates the sudden space of emptiness, nothingness, and absence. That gesture represents a violation, an attempt to rationalize and neutralize the mystery: Kapoor is capturing man’s inability to stop before the sacred.
Another remarkable work by Anish Kapoor is When I Am Pregnant (1992): a fiberglass and paint bulb that emerges from a white wall as a protrusion, appearing more or less distinct depending on the angle from which it is viewed.
Kapoor loves mirrors, unparalleled allies in the art of distortion. Works such as Double Mirror (1997), Turning the World Upside Down (1995), and Suck (1998), with their reflective surfaces, perfectly embody Kapoor’s desire to confuse the senses and alter reality. Shiny and intriguing as a distorting mirror is also his most famous work: Cloud Gate, the imposing stainless steel bean, eighteen meters long and nine meters high, dominates Chicago’s Millennium Park and has become an iconic symbol of the city. Built between 2004 and 2006, the sculpture captures passersby, the surrounding landscape, and the sky in a single smooth, curved surface that doubles and redefines urban space. The same concept is echoed in Sky Mirror, a gleaming metal disc that Kapoor has reinterpreted in various forms in Nottingham, London, and New York, almost a signature piece that, through its simplicity and dramatic power, conveys the artist’s vision.
Sculpture, Kapoor seems to tell us, is a non-object, a window into nothingness, something that alters the environment only to dissolve within it.
