Kapoor became known in the 1980s for his
geometric or
biomorphic sculptures using simple materials such as
granite,
limestone,
marble, pigment and
plaster. These early sculptures are frequently simple, curved forms, usually monochromatic and brightly coloured, using powder
pigment to define and permeate the form. He has said of the sculptures "While making the pigment pieces, it occurred to me that they all form themselves out of each other. So I decided to give them a generic title,
A Thousand Names, implying
infinity, a thousand being a symbolic number. The powder works sat on the floor or projected from the wall. The powder on the floor defines the surface of the floor and the objects appear to be partially submerged, like icebergs. That seems to fit inside the idea of something being partially there..." Such use of pigment characterised his first high-profile exhibit as part of the
New Sculpture exhibition at the
Hayward Gallery London in 1978. London, 1996 In the late 1980s and 1990s, Kapoor was acclaimed for his explorations of matter and non-matter, specifically evoking the void in both free-standing sculptural works and ambitious installations. Many of his sculptures seem to recede into the distance, disappear into the ground or distort the space around them. In 1987, he began working in stone. His later stone works are made of solid, quarried stone, many of which have carved apertures and cavities, often alluding to, and playing with dualities (earth-sky, matter-spirit, lightness-darkness, visible-invisible, conscious-unconscious, male-female, and body-mind). "In the end, I'm talking about myself. And thinking about making nothing, which I see as a void. But then that's something, even though it really is nothing." a 35-metre-high piece which was installed in the
Baltic Flour Mills in
Gateshead, England, prior to the renovation beginning there which turned the structure into the
Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art; and
Marsyas (2002), a large work consisting of three steel rings joined by a single span of
PVC membrane that reached end to end of the Turbine Hall of
Tate Modern. In 2007, he showed
Svayambh (which translated from
Sanskrit means "self-generated"), a 1.5-metre block of red wax that moved on rails through the
Nantes Musée des Beaux-Arts as part of the Biennale estuaire; this piece was shown again in a major show at the
Haus der Kunst in Munich and in 2009 at the
Royal Academy in London. Some of Kapoor's work blurs the boundaries between architecture and art. In 2008, Kapoor created
Memory in
Berlin and New York for the
Guggenheim Foundation, his first piece in
Cor-Ten, which is formulated to produce a protective coating of rust. Weighing 24 tons and made up of 156 parts, it calls to mind
Richard Serra's huge, rusty steel works, which also invite viewers into perceptually confounding interiors. In 2009, Kapoor became the first Guest Artistic Director of
Brighton Festival. Kapoor installed four sculptures during the festival:
Sky Mirror at
Brighton Pavilion gardens;
C-Curve at
The Chattri,
Blood Relations (a collaboration with author
Salman Rushdie); and
1000 Names, both at the Fabrica Gallery. He also created a large site-specific work titled
The Dismemberment of Jeanne d’Arc and a performance-based installation:
Imagined Monochrome. The public response was so overwhelming that police had to re-divert traffic around
C Curve at the Chattri and exercise crowd control. In September 2009, Kapoor was the first living artist to have a solo exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts. As well as surveying his career to date, the show also included new works. On display were
Non-Object mirror works, cement sculptures previously unseen, and
Shooting into the Corner, a cannon that fires pellets of wax into the corner of the gallery. Having fully occupied the site's "cathedral" space, the work consists of a huge steel volume, 60 metres long and 8 metres high, that visitors enter. Inside, they gradually lose their perception of space, as it gets progressively darker and darker until there is no light, forcing people to use their other senses to guide them through the space. The entrance of the tunnel is goblet-shaped, featuring an interior and exterior surface that is circular, making minimal contact with the ground. Over the course of the exhibition, the work was progressively covered by some 160 cubic metres of earth by a large mechanical device, forming a sharp mountain of dirt which the tunnel appears to be running through. In 2016, his art exposition in
MUAC (
Mexico City) was a success, with literary contributions from Catherine Lampert, Cecilia Delgado, and Mexican writer
Pablo Soler Frost. Kapoor sued the
National Rifle Association of America (NRA) in 2018. The gun lobby group had, without the sculptor's consent, used a filmed image of
Cloud Gate in an approximately one-minute-long promotional video called "The Violence of Lies". The suit was ultimately
settled out of court. Kapoor reported that the settlement included the removal of his work from the NRA's film, saying "They have now complied with our demand to remove the unauthorized image of my sculpture
Cloud Gate from their abhorrent video, which seeks to promote fear, hostility, and division in American society". In August 2025, a new work designed by Kapoor titled
Butchered was hung on Skiff, a
Shell plc oil rig 45 nautical miles off the coast of
Norfolk. The work comprises a 12 metre by 8 metre canvas sprayed with a "blood-like solution" mixed from seawater, beetroot powder and non-toxic food-based pond dye. The artwork was erected illegally by
Greenpeace activists with Kapoor's blessing to draw attention to "the vast suffering extreme weather is causing", and is believed to be "the first fine artwork exhibited from a working gas extraction platform", according to
The Guardian.
Public commissions , 2010 Kapoor's earliest public commissions include the
Cast Iron Mountain at the Tachikawa Art Project in Japan, as well as an untitled 1995 piece installed at Toronto's
Simcoe Place resembling mountain peaks. In 2001,
Sky Mirror, a large mirror piece that reflects the sky and surroundings, was commissioned for a site outside the
Nottingham Playhouse. Since 2006,
The Bean, a 110-
ton stainless steel sculpture with a mirror finish, officially titled
Cloud Gate, has been permanently installed in
Millennium Park in
Chicago. In the autumn of 2006, a second 10-metre
Sky Mirror, was installed at
Rockefeller Center, New York City. for
Pollino National Park, the largest national park in Italy, as part of the project
ArtePollino – Another South. Kapoor's work,
Cinema di Terra (
Earth Cinema), is a 45m long, 3m wide and 7m deep cut into the landscape made from concrete and earth.
Cinema di Terra officially opened to public in September 2009. The first of these sculptures,
Tememos, was unveiled to the public in June 2010.
Temenos stands 50 metres high and is 110 metres in length. A steel wire mesh pulled taut between two enormous steel hoops, it remains an ethereal and an uncertain form despite its colossal scale. In 2010,
Turning the World Upside Down, Jerusalem was commissioned and installed at the
Israel Museum in
Jerusalem. The sculpture is described as a "16-foot tall polished-steel hourglass" and it "reflects and reverses the Jerusalem sky and the museum's landscape, a likely reference to the city's duality of celestial and earthly, holy and profane". The
Greater London Authority selected Kapoor's
Orbit sculpture from a shortlist of five artists as the permanent artwork for the Olympic Park of the
2012 Olympic Games. an inflatable concert hall that will travel around the earthquake struck regions of Japan, designed in collaboration with architect
Arata Isozaki. •
Orbit, is situated in Middlehaven Dock, Middlesbrough. •
Dismemberment Site 1, installed in New Zealand at the
Gibbs Farm sculpture park, owned by New Zealand businessman and art patron
Alan Gibbs. •
56 Leonard Street, New York, in collaboration with architects
Herzog and de Meuron. • Two subway stations in
Naples at Monte San Angelo and Triano in collaboration with
Future Systems. •
Taratantara for the
Millennium Dome, London, (1995) in collaboration with Philip Gumuchdjian. • Building for a Void,
Stage design Kapoor has designed
stage sets including for; the opera
Idomeneo at Glyndebourne in 2003;
Pelléas et Mélisande,
La Monnaie in Brussels, and a dance-theatre piece called
in-i with
Akram Khan and
Juliette Binoche at the
National Theatre in London. ==Anish Kapoor Foundation==