Born in 1957, George Condo is a Contemporary visual artist who creates paintings, sculptures, drawings, and prints. His work has influenced a whole generation of artists. Condo attended the University of Massachusetts in Lowell, where he studied art history and music theory. He moved to Boston after two years of college and worked in a silkscreen shop, then joined a band called The Girls with Abstract painter Mark Dagley. While in the band, Condo met Jean-Michel Basquiat, and this meeting prompted Condo to move to New York and seriously pursue a career as an artist.
Condo’s first public exhibitions were held in East Village galleries between 1981 and 1983. It was also during this time that he worked in Andy Warhol's factory, applying gold dust to Warhol’s Myths series. In 1983, Condo moved to Los Angeles, and had his first solo exhibition. He then moved to Germany and worked with the Mulheimer Freiheit group. He met and forged a friendship with Keith Haring, and produced several of his works during this period, including Dancing to Miles, which was included in the 1987 Whitney Biennial, and was completed in Haring’s studio. One of Condo’s greatest collaborative partners was William S. Burroughs. The two worked together on many paintings and sculptures between 1988 and 1996. They completed a series of writings and etchings titled Ghost of Chance, which was published by the Whitney Museum in 1991.
Condo is also well-known for book and album cover art. He provided the cover art for Jack Kerouac’s Book of Sketches, and did the album cover for Kanye West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy as well as album art for Danny Elfman. Condo has had exhibitions at the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston, the Musée Maillol in Paris, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Staatliche Kunthstalle Baden-Baden in Germany, and the Albright-Knox Museum in Buffalo, NY.
Condo currently works and resides in New York.
SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2018
- George Condo at Cycladic, Museum of Cycladic Art, Athens, Greece
- Expanded Portrait Compositions, Maritime Museum, Hong Kong
- Face-Off: Picasso / Condo, Sotheby’s S|2, Hong Kong
2017
- The Way I Think, The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C. This exhibition travelled to the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, Denmark.
- Almine Rech, Paris, France
- George Condo: New Works, Skarstedt, New York, NY
- Newport Sexx Festival, Newport, R.I.
2016
- George Condo: Entrance to the Void, Sprüth Magers Los Angeles, CA
- George Condo. Selections from a Private Collection, The Heydar Aliyev Centre, Baku, Azerbaijan
- Confrontation, Museum Berggruen, Berlin, Germany
AWARDS
- 1999: Academy Award in Art, American Academy of Arts and Letters
- 2005: Award, Francis J. Greenburger Foundation
- 2008: Annual Artist Award, ArtsConnection
- 2008: National Artist Award, Anderson Ranch
- 2013: New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting & Sculpture Honoree
- 2018: BOMB 37th Anniversary Gala Honorees
PUBLIC COLLECTIONS
Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York
Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto
Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art, Olso, Norway
Citigroup Art Advisory Service Collection, New York
Deste Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Athens
Doron Sebbag Art Collection, ORS Ltd., Tel Aviv
Fonds National d’Art Contemporain, Ministère de la Culture, Paris
Fonds Regional d’Art Contemporain, Ile de France, Paris
Kunsthalle Bielefeld, Bielefeld, Germany
Moderna Museet, Stockholm
Museu d’Art Contemporani, Barcelona
Norton Gallery, Palm Beach, Florida
Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt
Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam
Tate Modern, London
The Broad Collection, Los Angeles
The Judith Rothschild Foundation, Fort Washington, Pennsylvania
The Karpidas Family Collection, Dallas
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
The National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.
The Olbricht Collection, Berlin
The Pisces Collection, Donaueschingen, Germany
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
