Jeff Koons

Jeff Koons is arguably the most well known contemporary artist living today. He was born in York, Pennsylvania in 1955. Koons was artistically inclined and interested at a very young age. He went on to study painting at the School of Art Institute of Chicago, and the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore.

After finishing his studies in 1977, Koons moved to New York trying to establish himself as an artist. In the 1980s, he would finance his art by working as a stocks and commodities broker on Wall Street. Since his first solo exhibition in 1980, his work has evolved from small-scale assemblages of toys and found objects to his now iconic monumental works, including huge balloon animals rendered in mirror-polished stainless steel, as well as flowering topiary sculptures, such as Puppy (1992), which is permanently installed at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao. Koons has always stated his artistic ambition to be to ”communicate with the masses”. He does this by employing concepts like the ancient, the everyday and the sublime to engage the viewer in a dialogue with cultural history. 

Koons has exhibited at a great amount of major international institutions. In 2013, Koons Balloon Dog (Orange), sold at Christie’s for 58.4 millon USD, making it the most expensive work sold by a living artist at auction. Koons lives and works in New York City.