Premio Combat Prize

Anita Klein studied at Chelsea and the Slade Schools of Art. From 2003 – 2006 she served as president of the Royal Society of Painter Printmakers (PRE) and has paintings and prints in many private and public collections in Europe, the USA and Australia, including the Arts Council of Great Britain, the British Museum the V&A and the British Library. She exhibits regularly with Eames Fine Art and Advanced Graphics London as well as widely in the UK, Europe and Australia dividing her time between studios in London and Italy. More of her work can be seen on her website: www.anitaklein.com
Born 1960 Sydney, Australia
1978-9 Foundation Course, Chelsea School of Art, London
1979-83 BA (Hons) Fine Art, Slade School of Art, London
1983-5 MA (Higher Diploma) Printmaking, Slade School of Art, London
1992 Elected Associate of the Royal Society of Painter Printmakers
1995 Elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Painter Printmakers
2003-6 President of the Royal Society of Painter Printmakers
SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2019 Eames Fine Art – Conversations: paintings, drawings and prints
2018 Eames Fine Art – These Fleeting Days: new paintings
2017 Eames Fine Art – Out of the Ordinary: linocuts
2016 Eames Fine Art - In Australia: New Paintings
2015 Eames Fine Art London – Full Circle; New paintings
Marine House at Beer, Devon – new paintings
Wetpaint Gallery Cirencester – paintings and prints
Oriel Wrecsam, Wales – Printmaker in Focus
2014 Eames Fine Art London – paintings & prints
Hayletts Contemporary Art Essex – paintings & prints
Cambridge Contemporary Art – paintings & prints
2013 Konst och Folk, Stockholm – paintings & prints
Eames Fine Art London – paintings
Galleri Bla, Linkoping, Sweden – paintings & prints
Art Vault, Mildura, Australia – linocuts
Birds Gallery, Melbourne, Australia - linocuts
2012 The Fine Art Partnership London – Linocuts
Marine House at Beer, Devon – paintings and prints
Oriel Wrecsam Gallery, Wales – prints
The Story Museum Oxford – mural and paintings
The Royal College of Music London – backdrop, paintings and prints
2011 The Fine Art Partnership and Bankside Gallery London – “Through the Looking Glass” paintings and prints
2010 Advanced Graphics London – “Un Altro Mondo” paintings and prints
The Fine Art Partnership London – “Uccelli” paintings and prints
2009 Boundary Gallery London - paintings
Bankside Gallery London – paintings “Italian Angels”
2008 Advanced Graphics London – new monoprints
Chelsea & Westminster Hospital Gallery – new prints
Fine Art Partnership Sussex – paintings drawings & prints
2007 Royal Commonwealth Club, London – Australian paintings
2007 The Fine Art Partnership, Nottingham – paintings, drawings and prints
2006 Boundary Gallery, London – small oils and watercolours
Bankside Gallery, London – new paintings & prints
Advanced Graphics, London – new monoprints
2005 Greek Printmakers Gallery, Athens, Greece -prints
2004 Advanced Graphics, London – “Ordinary Miracles” prints
Boundary Gallery, London – paintings, drawings and watercolours
2003 Helen Gory Gallery, Melbourne, Australia - paintings
2002 Advanced Graphics London –retrospective exhibition of prints; “20 Years of Printmaking”
Boundary gallery, London – paintings, drawings and watercolours
2001 Boundary Gallery, London – paintings, drawings, watercolours and ceramics
2000 Cambridge Contemporary Art – paintings and prints
Port Jackson Press, Melbourne, Australia - prints
1999 Pyramid Gallery, York – prints and ceramics
Port Jackson Press, Melbourne, Australia - prints
Old Town Gallery, Tustin, California, USA - prints
1998 Cambridge Contemporary Art – paintings and prints
Beaux Arts, Bath - paintings
1997 Leeds City Art Gallery, the Craft & Design Centre - prints
1996 Beaux Arts, Bath - paintings
Cambridge Contemporary Art – paintings and prints
1995 Gateway Arts Centre, Shrewsbury – 2 person show of prints with Paula Rego
European Art Fair, Ghent, with Beaux Arts - paintings
1994 Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester - paintings
1993 Woodlands Art Gallery, London - paintings and prints
1992 Royal Pavillion Contemporary Gallery, Brighton – paintings and prints
Victorian Artists Society, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia - prints
1991 Wilson Hale, London – paintings and prints
1990 Tall House Gallery, London - prints
Printworks, Colchester – paintings and prints
1987 Leigh Gallery, London - prints
1986 Creaser Gallery, London – paintings and prints
GROUP EXHIBITIONS INCLUDE:
Hayward Gallery (British Drawing), Royal Academy of Arts, Institute of Contemporary Arts, Blond Fine Art, Contemporary Arts Society, Christies, Discerning Eye Exhibition London, Hunting Art Prizes, Cleveland Drawing Biennale, Glasgow Print Studio, London Art Fair, Barbican Concourse Gallery London, Royal Academy Summer Exhibition London, 20/21 British Art Fair, Art London, National Print Exhibition London, London Original PrintFair,
International Federation of Print Dealers, The Armoury, New York.
AWARDS, SCHOLARSHIPS, RESIDENCIES:
2018 The Print Block prize at The Masters, Screen & Stone, Bankside Gallery, London
2016 Invited Artist, Lessedra International Mini Print Annual, Sofia, Bulgaria
2013 Artist in Residence, The Art Vault, Mildura, Australia
2007 Best Artist, London Fringe – Fringe Report.
2006 Artist in Residence, Bundanon (Arthur Boyd Foundation), Australia
2003 University of Wales Purchase Prize, National Print Exhibition, London
1995 John Purcell Award, National Print Exhibition, London
1991 John Purcell Award for an outstanding print, Bankside Open
1984 Joseph Webb Award, Royal Society of Painter Printmakers
1982 & 1983 Henrique Scholarship, Slade School of Art
PUBLICATIONS
2011 “Through the Looking Glass” monograph published by Five Leaves Pubs. UK
2010 “Uccelli” boxed set of woodcuts published by The Fine Art Partnership London
2009 “Italian Angels” monograph published by Five leaves Pubs. UK with introduction by Maia Swift
2006 “Anita Klein Painter Printmaker” monograph published by Five Leaves Pubs. UK with introduction by Mel Gooding
2004 “Ordinary Miracles” boxed set of screenprints with woodblock published by Advanced Graphics London
1998/9/2000/1/2/3/4/5/6/7/8 woodblock/screenprints published by Advanced Graphics,London
1997/8 etchings published by CCA Galleries, London
PUBLIC COLLECTIONS
British Museum, Arts Council England, British Library, Victoria & Albert Museum London, University of Wales Aberystwyth, University College London, Ashmolean Museum Oxford, Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge, Paintings in Hospitals permanent collection, Leicestershire Education Authority, Freshfields London, Arthur Boyd Collection Australia, Borchard Collection of 20th Century Self Portraits, Lessedra International printmaking collection, Bulgaria. Jiangsu Museum of Contemporary Art, China
PRESS
“Ravel said he wanted his music to be complex, but not complicated. Anita Klein might say the same of her art. There is a grand simplicity to her works, but that is not the same as saying that they lack subtlety and ambiguity. On the contrary, they have the sort of unselfconscious directness that comes from living and breathing art for so long that it becomes second nature” John Russell Taylor, The Times, London.
-“A strong, quirkily humorous depiction of quotidian events” - Nick Andrew, Galleries magazine
-“The pictures, which celebrate the small moments of life which often go unappreciated, are warm, witty and quite delightful” - Julia Weiner, Jewish Chronicle
-“It is quite brave not only to have a subject matter to your painting these days but also to be fascinated by such ordinary things. There are no desperate attempts to shock, expose or outrage; simply poignant moments showing the things which you would most miss if they were taken away from you” - Helen Smithson, Ham & High.
-“Celebrating oases of joy in the quotidian, Anita Klein builds a personal archive, brimming with charisma and wit, that can be identified with by everyone” - Britart.com
-“It is nice to have a real humorist recruited to the ranks of gifted painters. She is to be congratulated on livening up our dreary lives” - Guy Burn, Art Review.
-“Star of the show for me is the spare, knowing, subversive and comic work of a young painter called Anita Klein” - Godfrey Smith, Sunday Times
-“A blithe demonstration of intimacy” - William Zimmer, New York Times
-”She is an artist of extraordinary verve and lyrical touch...These images are mirrors of a resonant delight in the moment, an exuberant and infectious love of life. Unfashionable as it is, Anita Klein’s work actually makes us happy.” David Carpanini PRE
-“ Anita Klein renders the ordinary existence into a celebration of life - mostly based on her family. Her style is remarkably and unmistakably individual - her brilliant palette (based on her Australian childhood?), great compositions and draughtsmanship (hardly to be attributed to the Slade - when she studied there, figurative art was out of favour) all reveal a highly committed and uncompromising artist.” Agi Katz, Boundary Gallery London
-‘I know she’s got a quirky scale and that the figures are larger than life,’ says Jenny Groom, owner of a cookery school in Wiltshire, who bought one of Anita Klein’s oil paintings five years ago, ‘but it just accentuates their personality. The painting I have is called ”Tuesday Evening”, and it shows two women sitting across the table from one another, each holding a glass of wine. You just know they’ve got rid of their husbands and the kids are in bed and they’re having a good gossip, and it makes me laugh every time I look at it. She observes the minutiae of family life - the little things we do that are important to us. If my house was burning down, this is what I’d save.’(Quoted in the Telegraph Magazine 2004)
-“Those values of disegno - line and division, pure colour planes, formal pattern and interval - are those of the great mural painting of the early renaissance - the art of Giotto, Piero della Francesco and Masaccio - that Klein reveres above all others, and to which she has paid the closest attention. Like theirs, hers is an art of stillness, of action caught and suspended in the transfiguring moment.... These are the elements of abstract style, the components of the formal economy to which I referred at the outset. They are to be found ...in the quattrocento modernism that placed such revolutionary value upon the depiction of ordinary men and women in extraordinary circumstances, conferring dignity upon them by abstract formalities of figuration and placement. Klein puts these grand principles of ‘artistic style’ to work in the transformation of the South London quotidian, creating out of household events and holiday pleasures images of a resonant contemporary myth of love.”
Mel Gooding April 2006
“This award reflects the emotional insight of Anita Klein in her observation and understanding of intimate social, family and sexual relationships, and her glorious ability to bring them to paper. It celebrates her sensual feel for form, human curves, shapes, moods, the patterns of touch between friends and friends – and lovers; the flow of their clothes and naked bodies; and the graceful optimism her paintings release into the world. They warm the air.” Best Artist award UK Fringe, Fringe Report 2007
“Anita Klein is one of the finest and most collected printmakers working in Britain today. Her art is witty, charismatic, warm and poignant; an archive of personal moments that everyone can identify with.” Latest 7 Magazine 2008
“At a time when the art world seems to be full of artists attempting to shock and denigrate, Klein’s intimate, life affirming work comes as a welcome breath of fresh air. Her works convey a unique pleasure in the everyday moments that make life special”. Vincent Eames, The Fine Art Partnership
“How refreshing, then, to encounter the art of Anita Klein. This London based artist understands implicitly that, while art is a product to be made and traded, it is primarily and most importantly a way of communication between the artist and the public, a medium for sharing what it means to be alive and aware. Her work is popular, but never dumbed down, and it is very well made. Her paintings and prints can be understood at first viewing but, like all good art,become better known and more satisfying through repeated viewings... What unites all these works is their honesty, resulting in images that find their place in peoples’ homes and lives, rewarding repeated viewings, and producing delight. That is a rare gift in the art world.”
Richard Noyce, The India Art Journal. Spring 2012