Tony Cragg

Sir Tony Cragg is an English sculptor. He began studying art at the College of Art and Design in Gloucestershire in the late 1960s. He then joined the painting class at Wimbledon School of Art and finally transferred to the Royal College of Art in London. Cragg quickly discovered his passion for sculpture and increasingly focussed on his elaborate sculptures. Landscape art such as that by the conceptual artist Richard Long played an important role in his early work. After a one-year teaching position at the École de Beaux-Arts in Metz, Tony Cragg moved to Wuppertal in 1977 and worked there for two years in almost complete seclusion. In the same year, he took up a teaching position at the Düsseldorf Art Academy and became Rector in 2013. This was followed by memberships at the Berlin Academy of Arts, the Royal Academy of Arts in London and the Düsseldorf Art Academy. He has also received numerous awards, such as the Turner Prize in 1988 and the Federal Cross of Merit 1st Class in 2012. Since the 1980s, Cragg has exhibited at major national and international exhibitions, including documenta 7 and 8 as well as five biennials in Venice, Sao Paulo and Sydney. At the same time, his oeuvre shifted away from natural materials towards the characteristic bronze sculptures. More and more drawings also found their way into his oeuvre. Since the mid-2000s, Tony Cragg has dedicated himself to a very special project – the Waldfrieden Sculpture Park in his current home town of Wuppertal. Since its opening in 2008, the park has been showing works by Tony Cragg as well as changing exhibitions of works by international sculptors.