George Condo

Conversations

2011

George Condo was born in Concord, New Hampshire in 1957. He attended the University of Massachusetts, in Lowell, where he studied Music Theory and Art History. Condo’s art can be viewed as a multilayered experience that brings the viewer in touch with a psychological exploration of human nature. Through the process of transformation involving art historical language and an actualization of philosophical content, Condo’s paintings create a visible window into the world we live in. His work is in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo; The National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, The Judith Rothschild Foundation, Philadelphia; Broad Art Foundation, Los Angeles; Marciano Art Foundation, Los Angeles; Tate Modern, London; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Fonds National d’Art Contemporain, Ministère de la Culture, Paris; Fonds Regional d’Art Contemporain, Ile de France, Paris; Staedel Museum, Frankfurt; Dakis Joannou Collection Foundation, Athens; Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art, Oslo; Museu d’Art Contemporani, Barcelona; the Doron Sebbag Art Collection, ORS Ltd., Tel Aviv; Museo Jumex, Mexico City; and Moderna Museet, Stockholm. Condo has been invited to lecture at many prestigious institutions including Columbia University, Yale University, Pasadena Art Center, San Francisco MOMA, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Mr. Condo taught a six-month course at Harvard University entitled Painting Memory. In 1999 Mr. Condo received an Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters; in 2005 he received the Francis J. Greenberger Award; in 2013 Condo was honored by the New York Studio School; in 2018 he was a BOMB Magazine 2018 Anniversary Gala Honoree. Condo recently performed, painting live, on-stage in Anthony Roth Constanzo’s Glass Handel, an opera co-produced by the Philadelphia Opera and National Sawdust, featuring the music of George Frideric Handel and Phillip Glass. In 2019, Condo was selected to participate in the 58th International Art Exhibition La Biennale di Venezia: May You Live in Interesting Times, curated by Ralph Rugoff. Condo was also the subject of a major retrospective of works on paper titled The Way I Think at the Phillips Collection in Washington D.C., in early 2017, which travelled to the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark in the Fall of 2017. In 2016 Condo’s work was the feature of a museum-wide exhibition, Confrontation, at the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin – Museum Berggruen, Berlin, curated by Udo Kittelmann. In 2011, the New Museum, New York presented the retrospective exhibition, Mental States. This exhibition travelled to Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam; Hayward Gallery, London; and Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt. EDUCATION 1976-78 Lowell University, Massachusetts