Jenny Holzer

Jenny Holzer is an American-born artist, member of the American conceptual art movement. She was born in July 1950 in Gallipolis, Ohio.

In 1968 she entered Durham University in North Carolina then continued her studies at the University of Chicago where she worked in different mediums; painting , printing, drawing ... It was at the University of Ohio that she obtained her degree in Fine Arts. She completed her studies at the Rhode Island School of Art and Design where she received her Master of Arts in 1977.

For around ten years (1990-2000), Jenny Holzer projected her works on ordinary buildings or monuments all over the world. A fervent feminist, it was in the 1980s that Jenny Holzer became known to the general public alongside female artists, mostly photographers, such as Cindy Sherman, Louise Lawler and Barbara Kruger.

Today she is a politically engaged artist who disseminates her work with challenging messages in the social and public sphere.

Heir to minimalism and conceptual art, art critics attribute constructivist influences to her. She is an artist with a subversive background. She makes provocation her signature, her favorite themes are raw and challenging messages. In her luminous works, she often addresses sensitive and thorny subjects such as sex, death and war.

Her career as a committed artist began in the early 1970s, during which she published and pasted posters with virulent inscriptions. The artist tries to interest a wide audience. Time passes and its medium evolves, it becomes more modern, it is through luminous and electric writing, even projected, that it appeals to its audience today. From now on, she projects her work in large font on the facade of buildings, or other places to reach as many people as possible. She practices her art and projects it in metropolises like Paris, London, New York... But also in villages around the world. Jenny Holzer is one of those 20th century artists who question the art market and institutions. For Holzer, the place of art is nowhere other than the street within people's reach.

As a projection, his art is ephemeral, but becomes permanent when it involves LED strips installed in galleries or museums or when it involves photographs . Her art is based on the meaning of the word, Jenny Holzer plays with languages and seeks to materialize language in space, she testifies through her texts to her continued political and social commitment.

Jenny Holzer was the first woman to represent the United States at the 1990 Venice Biennale. The artist's works are today present in the collections of the greatest modern art institutions.