Christopher Le Brun

Host Jill Spalding hosts painter Christopher Le Brun, who also happens to be President of the Royal Academy, at the Clocktower studios during the run of his exhibition, New Paintings, at Friedman Benda in Manhattan (Sept.-Oct. 2014).

Known for his highly charged and evocative imagery, the new works revolve around embedded and over-painted imagery. They depend on color, physicality of mark-making and surface as a thesis. Le Brun states, “One of the characteristics of my work is the tension between revealing and covering. This can be just as potent psychologically as any narrative.” This is his first show in New York in ten years.

Christopher Le Brun lives and works in London. Born in in 1951 in Portsmouth, he trained at the Slade and Chelsea Schools of Art in London. Early in his career, he appeared in numerous group exhibitions, such as the influential Zeitgeist exhibition at the Martin-Gropius Bau, Berlin, and from 1980 on, in many solo exhibitions in Britain, Europe and America. Le Brun participated in the Venice Biennale in 1982 and received the prestigious John Moores Prize in 1978 and 1980. From 1987-88 he worked in Berlin as a guest of the DAAD artist’s program.

Between 1990 and 2003 he served as a trustee of the Tate and subsequently of the National Gallery, a period which saw his involvement in the radical developments of Tate at Bankside, Liverpool and St. Ives as well as the masterplan and re-development of the east wing of the National Gallery. In 2010, he was made an Honorary Fellow of the University of Arts in London. He was elected President of the Royal Academy in December 2011, the 26th President since Sir Joshua Reynolds and the youngest since Lord Leighton in 1878.

Le Brun’s work is in numerous public collections, including the British Museum, London; National Portrait Gallery, London; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Oslo; Museum of Modern Art, New York; High Museum, Atlanta, among others.

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