Jeff Koons is the most expensive artist of our time.
Artist Jeff Koons, a lover of kitsch and shocking art, is often called a modern Andy Warhol. His sculptures are sold for tens of millions of dollars, and he has a whole staff of employees who bring his ideas and plans to life. Jeff Koons was born on January 21, 1955 in Pennsylvania and began drawing at the age of seven, studying at the Maryland College of Art and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. After college, Jeff worked as a broker on Wall Street, where he probably learned how to work with money. At the same time, he was engaged in creativity, and his first success came to him in the mid-80s, around the same time he opened his first studio and hired more than 30 artists.
The artist’s first creations were installations in the spirit of conceptualism. In the mid-80s, Koons created a series of sculptures called “Balance”.
In 1988, Koons presented his new series “Banality”. The artist was inspired to create this series by porcelain figurines, the so-called Hummel figurines. Here Jeff conveys their meaning in an unconventional, kitschy format.
In the 90s, he began to create his famous, recognizable steel sculptures in the form of balloons.
In 1992, Koons presented a very unusual bush sculpture of a West Highland White Terrier puppy. This 13-meter-tall installation includes many different types of flowers, held by a steel frame and watered by a built-in irrigation system. This floral figure is now on the terrace of the Guggenheim Museum of Modern Art in Bilbao in Spain.
The installation “Bouquet of Tulips” is one of Koons’s latest works; it was created in 2016-2019. in memory of the victims of the terrorist attack in Paris in 2015. The sculpture can be seen in Paris, near the Champs Elysees.