Michael Kenny was born in Liverpool in 1941. He studied at Liverpool College of Art (1959-61) and the Slade School of Fine Art, London (1961-64). Throughout the 1970s he was a visiting lecturer at the Slade School and from 1983 to 1988 was Head of the Fine Art Department at Goldsmith's College, London. Since he graduated from the Slade, Kenny has…
read the full biography
Michael Kenny was born in Liverpool in 1941. He studied at Liverpool College of Art (1959-61) and the Slade School of Fine Art, London (1961-64). Throughout the 1970s he was a visiting lecturer at the Slade School and from 1983 to 1988 was Head of the Fine Art Department at Goldsmith's College, London. Since he graduated from the Slade, Kenny has had many solo and group exhibitions in Britain and abroad, including Europe, USA, South America, Japan, Hong Kong and Australia. Consequently, many public and corporate collections throughout the world hold examples of his work.
The creative acts of drawing and making sculpture seem, in Michael Kenny's work, to be indivisible. The physical qualities of line are to be celebrated, whether drawn on smooth or textured paper or across a piece of stone, whether made in graphite or coloured pigment. 'Drawing', for Kenny, 'is a means of understanding, of searching for order out of chaos through images.' Geometry, symmetry and asymmetry are concerns, both in drawing and in sculpture. Stones with differing qualities are sometimes brought together in one piece, the grainy dark greens and browns of Hornton stone contrasting with the cool, smooth texture of Portland stone or the warmer hue of Bath stone. Recently Kenny has introduced blue-grey Kilkenny marble and white Carrara marbles into his compositions, adding to the range of colour and surface quality in his sculpture. Strong diagonals and verticals in both solid form and in line, pull our attention towards the notions of gravity which are also vital in his work.
Michael Kenny was elected Associate of the Royal Academy in 1976 and Royal Academician in 1986. He died in December 1999.
