Christian Boltanski

Christian Boltanski is a photographer, painter, sculptor, and installation artist. The child of a Ukrainian Jewish father and a Corsican mother, Boltanski’s early years were marked by the Nazi occupation of France, which forced his father to go into hiding. His work deals with the concepts of loss, memory, childhood, and death, often functioning as memorials or shrines to collective cultural rituals and events. Many of his installations may reference the lives lost in the Holocaust, striking both societal and personal chords. During the 1970s Boltanski participated in a number of important shows, exhibiting at the Musée d’art moderne de la Ville de Paris (1970); Documenta 5 in Kassel, Germany (1972); Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, Germany (1973); and Venice Biennale Architettura(1975). Since the 1970s he has participated in many other important exhibitions, including Documenta 8, Kassel (1987), and more recently has had solo shows at the Institut Mathildenhöhe, Darmstadt, Germany (2006); La maison rouge, Fondation Antoine de Galbert, Paris (2008); and Kunstmuseum Lichtenstein, Vaduz (2009). He received the Kaiserring prize from the city of Goslar, Germany (2001), and the Nord/LB, Braunschweig art prize later that same year. He was awarded the Praemium Imperiale for sculpture by the Japan Art Association (2006). Boltanski lives and works in the Malakoff neighborhood of Paris with his wife, Annette Messager, with whom he occasionally collaborates on projects.