British sculptor born in Liverpool, Cragg has been living in Wuppertal, Germany, since 1977. The artist studied at Gloucester College of Art and Design in Cheltenham (1968-69), Wimbledon School of Art (1969-72) and Royal College of Art (1972-77). Since 1978 he has worked as a professor at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf where in 1988 he was nominated professor. Early works of the 1970s were mostly made with found objects through which Cragg questioned and tested possibilities. Later pieces, sometimes derived from found materials, demonstrated a shift of interest to surface quality and how that could be manipulated, and a play with unlikely juxtapositions of materials. Results vary from the exquisite to the grotesque, from the refined to the crude, in bronze, steel, plastic, rubber, glass, wood, plaster and more. In 1988 he was awarded Tate Gallery’s Turner Prize. Since 1994 was made a member of the Royal Academy. Many of the people who Cragg admits to be influenced by are scientists and philosophers like Isaac Newton and Alain Prochiantz. Being inspired by their works in the 80s he exhibits small wooden forms resembling and creates gigantic versions of laboratory equipment. His concerns are for humanity, its direction, the life of our planet and its projected evolution. The first solo exhibition of Tony Cragg took place in 1977; he participated twice in Documenta in Kassel (in 1982 and 1987); in 1988 he represented Great Britain in the Venice Biannale. In recent years his work has been shown in solo exhibitions at the Henry Moore Foundation, Halifax and the Whitechapel Gallery in London. He has also exhibited at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, in Sydney, National Museum of Contemporary Art in Seoul and Museum d'Art Contemporain in Barcelona. Cragg's contribution to the debate on contemporary sculpture practice is considerable, and has yet to be measured. In the autumn of '96 he worked in the Henry Moore Studio in Halifax, making a series of new sculptures and around 150 drawings.
