hope – ultrawolvesunderthefullmoon

Gilbert and George, “Hope”, One of Four Paintings of the Series “Death Hope Life Fear”, 1984

Gilbert and George met in 1967 while students at St. Martin’s Art School in London. They began to create art together, developing a uniquely recognizable style both in their pictures and in their presentations of themselves as living sculptures. Over more than forty years, they developed a new format that created large-scale pictures, which are visually and emotionally powerful, through a unique creative process. Most of their pictures are created in groups and made especially for the space in which they are first exhibited.

The artists’ art, which is sometimes seen as subversive, controversial, and provocative, considers the entire cosmology of human experience and explores such themes as faith and religion, sexuality, race and identity, urban life, terrorism, superstition, AIDS-related loss, aging, and death.

Tomma Abts, “Hope”, 2011, Acrylic and Oil on Canvas, 48 x 38 cm

Born in Kiel, Germany in 1967, Tomma Abts is a contemporary abstract painter. She studied at Hodhschule der Künste in Berlin, later moving to London where she has her studio. Known for her small-scale, intricately composed geometric works, Abts works intuitively from drawings; her finished paintings bear the mark of being carefully re-worked numerous times.

The recipient of the 2006 Turner Prize, Abts has been exhibited widely. Her work has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions internationally, including at the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf in 2011, Douglas Hyde Gallery in 2005, the New Museum in 2008, and the Kunsthalle Basel in 2005. She is represented in many prestigious public collections, such as The Museum of Modern Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, Tate Britain, and the Hammer Museum, among others.

Since 2005, Tomma Abts has been represented by the David Zwirner Gallery with locations in New York, London, and Hong Kong.