Fort Worth Key Magazine

Jenny Saville: The Anatomy of Painting
2025-10-12 - 2026-01-18 | Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, 3200 Darnell St., Fort Worth, TX, 76107, United States
Organized by the National Portrait Gallery, London, and Senior Curator of Contemporary Collections, Sarah Howgate, Jenny Saville: The Anatomy of Painting is the first major museum exhibition in the US dedicated to the work of one of the world’s foremost figure painters. The exhibition will be overseen at the Modern by Chief Curator Andrea Karnes. Saville rose to prominence in the early 1990s, following her acclaimed degree show at the Glasgow School of Art. In the years since, she has played a leading role in the reinvigoration of figurative painting—a genre that she continues to test the limits of to this day. Her unique ability to create visceral portraits from thick layers of paint reveals an artist with a deep passion for the process itself, an act that she experiences as both energetic and bodily.
Bringing together fifty works made throughout the artist’s career, this exhibition traces the development of her practice from the 1990s to today, spotlighting key artworks from her career while exploring her lasting connection to art history. From charcoal drawings to large-scale oil paintings of the human form, this broadly chronological display includes works that question the conventional and historical notions of female beauty. The exhibition also highlights the monumental nudes that launched Saville to acclaim in 1992 and new ‘portraits’ made for the twenty-first century. Rendered in fluorescent, saturated tones, this pioneering series interrogates the connections between the physical and virtual in our image-saturated age.
Jenny Saville: The Anatomy of Painting was created in close collaboration with the artist, and includes works borrowed from important public and private collections around the world. The exhibition is accompanied by a comprehensive publication, with texts from Emanuele Coccia, Dr Nicholas Cullinan, John Elderfield, Roxane Gay, and Karnes, and a conversation between Saville and Howgate.
Images:
Jenny Saville
Reverse, 2002 – 2003
Oil on canvas
84 x 96 inches
213.4 x 243 cm
© Jenny Saville. All rights reserved, DACS 2024
Courtesy Gagosian
Jenny Saville
Drift, 2020–22
Oil and oil stick on canvas
39 3/8 x 47 1/4 inches
100 x 120 cm
© Jenny Saville. All rights reserved, DACS 2024
Photo: Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd. Courtesy Gagosian
