Franz West Vienna, Austria, 1947-2012

Franz West was born in 1947 in Vienna, Austria, and died there in 2012. He studied at the Academy of Applied Arts in Vienna from 1977 to 1982, and taught at the Städel School in Frankfurt in 1992/93.

West's work ranges from abstract and interactive sculpture to furniture and collage, and is at once lighthearted and deeply philosophical. Coming of age among the Actionist and Performance Art of the 1960s and 70s, he rejected a passive relationship between artwork and viewer. In 1973 he began making the Passstücke (Adaptives), compact, portable, mixed-media sculptures that become artworks only when touched, held, worn or carried. He went on to explore sculpture as a dialogue between viewers and objects, probing the relations between sculpture and painting and using everyday materials to examine art's place in social experience.

West represented Austria at the 44th Venice Biennale (1990) and took part in Documenta IX (1992) and Documenta X (1997). His solo and survey exhibitions include Proforma (1996) and Where Is My Eight? (2013) at the mumok, Vienna; the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Fundação de Serralves, Porto (both 1997); the Whitechapel Art Gallery, London (2003); the Fondation Beyeler, Basel (2009). He had a major retrospective at the Centre Pompidou, Paris (2018), that travelled to Tate Modern, London (2019). He received the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the 54th Venice Biennale in 2011, and his work is held in collections including the Centre Pompidou, Tate, the Albertina, and the Museum of Modern Art, New York.