Beauty Bleeds Through Jenny Saville's 'Anatomy of Painting'

Summary

• The National Portrait Gallery in London is currently presenting The Anatomy of Painting, the largest UK museum solo exhibition of works by seminal British artist Jenny Saville.
• On view through September 7, the exhibition chronicles Saville’s practice to date, bringing together 45 works from the early ’90s to today.

There’s a hunger that pulses through Jenny Saville’s work — an almost primal curiosity about the body and its strange, fleshy beauty. Swathed in bruise tones and vibrant accents, her portraits border dream and our own reality, peeling back the surface of skin to unpack who, or what, lies beneath it.

Staged at the National Portrait Gallery in London, Jenny Saville: The Anatomy of Painting marks the most extensive UK museum solo dedicated to the artist, tracing her decades-long investigation of the human form in a showcase of 45 works.

As its title suggests, the exhibition lays bare her enduring fascination with flesh and the medical gaze. Central to her practice are moments of close observation – bodies of the classical sculptural canon and those on the operating table – exploring the myriad of ways a body can be reconstructed, transformed and endlessly reimagined.

“Witnessing a surgeon makes you see how layered flesh is,” she noted. “I started to think about not just the anatomy of the body, but about the anatomy of painting: the layering, the pace and tempo of the painted surface, the viscosity of the paint.”

Rising to prominence in the 1990s after her breakout at Glasgow School of Art and her inclusion in the Saatchi Gallery’s Young British Artists III just a few years after, Saville has helped revitalize figurative painting for a new era, staying true to its historical traditions while bringing forth a new tactile, intimacy of skin and gesture.

In addition to the paintings on view, exhibition presents Saville’s more tender explorations of pregnancy and motherhood through works on paper — charcoal, pastel and pencil — offering a full view of her artistic brilliance across all registers. As curator Sarah Howgate puts it: “Walking a tightrope between figuration and abstraction, the exhibition celebrates and delights in the nature of paint itself.”

The exhibition is now on on view in London through September 7. To book tickets, head to the National Portrait Gallery’s website.

National Portrait Gallery
St. Martin’s Pl,
London WC2H 0HE, UK