"The Saatchi Gallery aims to provide an innovative forum for contemporary art, presenting work by largely unseen young artists or by international artists whose work has been rarely or never exhibited in the UK.
The audience for exhibitions of contemporary art has increased widely during the recent years as general awareness and interest in contemporary art has developed both in Britain and abroad. When The Saatchi Gallery first opened over twenty five years ago it was only those who had a dedicated interest in contemporary art who sought out the gallery to see work by new artists. The audience, however, built steadily over the years and by the time the gallery left its second home at County Hall, visitor numbers reached 600,000 per annum, with over 1,000 schools organising student visits. The Saatchi Gallery has worked with media sponsors on a number of shows including The Observer, The Sunday Times, Evening Standard, The Independent on Sunday and Time Out. Many artists showing at The Saatchi Gallery are unknown when first exhibited, not only to the general public but also to the commercial art world. Many of these artists are subsequently offered shows by galleries and museums internationally. In this effect, the gallery also operates as a springboard for young artists to launch their careers. "[6] |
" Jenny Saville’s monumental paintings wallow in the glory of expansiveness. Jenny Saville is a real painter’s painter. She constructs painting with the weighty heft of sculpture. Her exaggerated nudes point up, with an agonizing frankness, the disparity between the way women are perceived and the way that they feel about their bodies. One of the most striking aspects of Jenny Saville’s work is the sheer physicality of it. Jenny Saville paints skin with all the subtlety of a Swedish massage; violent, painful, bruising, bone crunching. "
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The Saatchi Gallery opened in 1985 in Boundary Road, St John's Wood, London in a disused paint factory of 30,000 square feet (2,800 m2). The first exhibition was held March—October 1985. The Gallery continued to do shows with many U.S. artists until Saatchi decided to sell all of the U.S. works and began to show a newer generation of British Artists. In April 2003, the gallery moved to County Hall, the Greater London Council's former headquarters on the South Bank, occupying 40,000 square feet of the ground floor.