Billy Lee was born in 1946, of Chinese and Dutch parentage in Uitenhage, South Africa. As a child his parents immigrated to England, where he received his BFA, 1st class honors 1969, from Birmingham Institute of Art and Design, and his MFA at the Royal College of Art, London, 1972. Upon graduating from the RCA, he was made Kennedy…
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Billy Lee was born in 1946, of Chinese and Dutch parentage in Uitenhage, South Africa. As a child his parents immigrated to England, where he received his BFA, 1st class honors 1969, from Birmingham Institute of Art and Design, and his MFA at the Royal College of Art, London, 1972. Upon graduating from the RCA, he was made Kennedy Scholar at the Center for Advanced Visual Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston, USA, and was later named a Fellow. He remains the only artist ever to receive the prestigious Kennedy Scholar award.
Lee has exhibited regularly in the United States, Europe, China and Japan, with a recent British show, Ochreous Earth, at the Royal Society of British Sculptors Gallery, London. In 2003 he was invited to participate in, Thinking Big: 21st Century British Sculpture at the Guggenheim in Venice. His sculptures are represented in public collections across the globe, including the Yuzi Paradise Sculpture Park, Guilin, China; Hakone/Utsukushi-ga-hara Open Air Museum, Japan; Dunaujvaros Sculpture Park, Hungary; Cementerio Carretas, Putaendo, Chile, the Shanghai Sculpture Park, the Memorial Rose Garden, Taipei, Taiwan, and many others in the United States.
Awards include the Giacomo Manzù Special Prize at the 7th Henry Moore International Sculpture Exhibition, Japan and, in 1993, he was awarded the Rodin Prize in the Fujisankei Biennale for his work exhibited in the Hakone/Utsukushi-ga-hara Open Air Museum, Japan. He was elected Associate of the Royal Society of British Sculptors, London, in 2000, and is a Member of the International Sculpture Center, Washington DC.
