The Whitechapel Gallery presents a 100-year survey of the studio

A Century of the Artist’s Studio 1920 – 2020
17 February – 29 May 2022
Media View: 15 February 2022
Galleries 1, 3, 8 & 9 and the Silkha Auditorium
#TheArtistsStudio

30 November 2021 – The Whitechapel Gallery presents a 100-year survey of the studio through the work of artists and image-makers from around the world.

Whether it be an abandoned factory, an attic or a kitchen table, it is the artist’s studio where the great art of our time is conceived and created. In this multi-media exhibition, the wide-ranging possibilities and significance of these crucibles of creativity take centre stage and new art histories around the modern studio emerge through striking juxtapositions of under-recognised artists with celebrated figures in Western art history.

The exhibition brings together more than 100 works by over 80 artists and collectives from Africa, Australasia, South Asia, China, Europe, Japan, the Middle East, North and South America. They range from modern icons such as Francis Bacon, Louise Bourgeois, Pablo Picasso, Egon Schiele and Andy Warhol, to contemporary figures such as Walead Beshty, Lisa Brice and Kerry James Marshall.

The exhibition includes paintings, sculptures, installations and films depicting the studio as work of art and presents documentation of artists’ studios by world-renowned photographers and film-makers. A series of ‘studio corners’ also recreate the actual environments where great art has been produced.

A Century of the Artist’s Studio follows three years of research led by Whitechapel Gallery Director Iwona Blazwick in collaboration with a curatorial panel comprising Dawn Ades, Richard Dyer and Hammad Nasar. Standing as the frontispiece to the exhibition, Louise Bourgeois’ (1911-2010) monumental sculpture, Cell IX (1999), imagines the studio as prison and portal. The exhibition then unfolds according to two central themes: The Public Studio – Artists Together, examines how artists have embraced the studio as a factory, exhibition space, arena, a collective workspace or classroom; and The Private Studio – Artists Alone, explores how the studio can be a home, refuge, laboratory or site of political resistance.

Alphabetical list of featured artists: Felicia Abban, Mequitta Ahuja, Darren Almond, Holly Antrum, Arpilleras Workshops, Frank Auerbach, Francis Bacon, Mirosław Bałka, Phyllida Barlow, Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, Vanessa Bell, Walead Beshty, Louise Bourgeois, Constantin Brâncusi, Geta Brătescu, Lisa Brice, Nikhil Chopra, Ha Bik Chuen, David Dawson, Marcel Duchamp, Inji Efflatoun, Tracey Emin, Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Peter Fischli & David Weiss, Helen Frankenthaler, Lucian Freud, Manisha Gera Baswani, Shadi Ghadirian, Alberto Giacometti, Antony Gormley, Rodney Graham, Duncan Grant, Andrew Grassie, Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh, & Hesam Rahmanian, Florence Henri, Barbara Hepworth, Roni Horn, Tehching Hsieh, William Kentridge, Edward Krasiński, Laboratoire Agit’Art, Maria Lassnig, Maud Lewis, Kim Lim, Maria Loizidou, Mateo López, Kerry James Marshall, John Mawurndjul, Paul McCarthy, Lisa Milroy, Henry Moore, Reinhard Mucha, Hans Namuth, Bruce Nauman, Pablo Picasso, Annie Ratti, Robert Rauschenberg, Armando Reverón, Martha Rosler, Dieter Roth, Egon Schiele, Carolee Schneeman, Gregor Schneider, Kurt Schwitters, Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Hassan Sharif, Anwar Jalal Shemza, Vivan Sundaram, Cindy Sherman, Frances Stark, Josef Sudek, Alina Szapocznikow, Wolfgang Tillmans, Jean Tinguely, Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri, Suha Traboulsi, Raoul Ubac, Ian Wallace, Andy Warhol, Ai Weiwei, Paul Winstanley, Francesca Woodman, Li Yuan-chia.