FORT WORTH, TX (PNAN) The Modern Art Museum opens Sunday, October 12,2025 with “Jenny Saville: The Anatomy of Painting” exhibition dedicated to the work of one of the world’s foremost contemporary painters. As the only U.S. venue for the Jenny Saville showing and organized by the National Portrait Gallery, London, the exhibition brings together nearly 50 works made throughout the artist’s career, which is broadly chronological in scope and traces the development of Saville’s practice from the 1990s to today.
Rising to prominence in the 1990s, Saville has played a leading role in reinvigorating figurative painting. Her works reveal a deep awareness of art history and the ways in which the body has been represented over time and across cultures. While inspired by great artists, like Michelangelo and Rembrandt, and influenced by modern masters like Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud, Saville is also intrigued by the work of abstract artists, including Willem de Kooning and Cy Twombly.
Saville’s early figurative representations were captivating in their depictions of heads and bodies. The exhibition reunites some of the paintings the artist created while still at the Glasgow School of Art, including ground-breaking works that launched her into the spotlight. The bold and intense aesthetic of these early paintings prefigures Saville’s later work and her ongoing interest in flesh and anatomy.
“We are honored that the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth will be the exclusive U.S. venue for Jenny Saville: The Anatomy of Painting, giving our community and visitors to Fort Worth a remarkable opportunity to experience and learn from the breadth of this celebrated artist’s work,” said Halona Norton-Westbrook, Ph.D, Director of the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth.
Highlighting key artworks, from monumental oil paintings to smaller-scale charcoal drawings, the exhibited works reveal the inventiveness of Saville’s practice. This survey was created in close collaboration with the artist to explore her deep passion for the painting process, including drawing as a cornerstone.
Saville’s painted forms in the exhibit includes a number of drawings that are intimate and almost sculptural in appearance. Using charcoal, pastel, and pencil, the medium of drawing has remained important to Saville’s practice, providing an important outlet for experimentation.
In addition, the exhibit concludes with the artist’s most recent series of new portraits that illustrate the evolution in her presentations of flesh. While her distinct style is maintained, these works fall between the figurative and the abstract. Rendered in saturated tones, for Saville, these paintings make connections between the physical and virtual in our contemporary age.
The exhibition is accompanied by a comprehensive publication of the same name, which is available at online at www.shop.themodern.org.
About
Jenny Saville was born in 1970 in Cambridge, England. She received her B.A. Honors Fine Art from Glasgow School of Art, Scotland before being represented by Gagosian in 1997. Saville is known for her depictions of the human form, which transcend the boundaries of both classical figuration and modern abstraction. Saville has been credited with originating a new and challenging method of depicting the figure in her work by imbuing her monumental paintings with a sculptural yet elusive dimensionality that verges on the abstract. Saville’s works are featured in several public collections, including the Tate, London; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Broad, Los Angeles; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; The Morgan Library & Museum, New York; Seattle Art Museum, Seattle; Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; and The Long Museum, Shanghai. In 2007, Saville was elected a Royal Academician, Royal Academy of Arts, London.