Bernar Venet

Bernar Venet (b.1941, Château-Arnoux, France) is a French conceptual artist best known for his steel sculptures that appear to defy gravity. At the age of 17, Venet moved to Nice to work as a set designer for the Opéra de Nice, before dedicating himself fully to art. During the 1960s, Venet developed his Tar paintings, Relief cartons and his iconic ‘Tas de charbon’ (Pile of Coal) (1963), his first sculpture with no specific shape. In 1966, Venet established himself in New York where, over the next five decades, he explored painting, poetry, film and performance. The year 1979 marked a turning point in Venet’s career when he began creating wood reliefs, Arcs, Angles, Straight Lines, and produced the first of his Indeterminate Lines. That same year, he was awarded a grant by the National Endowment for the Arts.

Venet’s career has been distinguished by a series of celebrated milestones. In 1994, Jacques Chirac, then Mayor of Paris, invited Venet to present twelve sculptures from his Indeterminate Line series on the Champ de Mars. This successful installation led to a world tour, visiting Asia, Europe, South America and North America. In 2007, Venet was chosen by the French Ministry of Culture to paint the ceiling of the Galerie Philippe Séguin, located in the Cour des Comptes, Paris. The following year, Sotheby’s invited Venet to exhibit his work at the Isleworth Country Club in Florida – the first time a single artist had been showcased at the venue. In May 2010, President Nicolas Sarkozy inaugurated Venet’s 30-metre-tall sculpture to commemorate the 150th anniversary of Nice’s reunification with France. In 2011, Venet became the fourth contemporary artist to present a solo exhibition of monumental sculptures at the world-renowned Château de Versailles. On this occasion, the French Postal Service issued a commemorative stamp featuring his 22-metre vertical Arcs, framing the iconic statue of Louis XIV at Versailles’ entrance. In October 2019, his ‘Arc Majeur’, nearly 200 feet tall, was inaugurated on the E411 motorway between Namur and Luxembourg, making it Europe’s largest sculpture.

Venet’s first retrospective took place at the New York Cultural Center on Columbus Circle in 1971. He has contributed to major art events such as Documenta VI in Kassel (1977) and has frequently participated in the Biennales of Paris, Venice and São Paulo. In 2022, Venet’s largest and most comprehensive retrospective to date opened at Kunsthalle Berlin, Tempelhof Airport. In 2024, after an impressive six-decade exploration of chance and entropy across diverse media, Venet collaborated with Sotheby’s to create his first long-form Generative Art collection, EVENT, showcasing 500 algorithmic artworks that explore the interplay of chance and unpredictability in the digital realm. Other notable recent exhibitions include: ‘Bernar Venet: Disorganizing Order’ at Wetterling Gallery, Stockholm (2024); ‘From the Rational to the Virtual: Paintings by Bernar Venet’ at the National Museum of Art, Riga, Latvia (2024); ‘Bernar Venet: Beyond Concept and Matter’ at the Phoenix Centre, Beijing (2024); ‘Bernar Venet – 1961… Looking Forward’ at the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Venice (2024); ‘Bernar Venet – Du Tas à l’Effondrement’ at Halle Verrière, Meisenthal, France (2023); and ‘L’Hypothèse de la Ligne Droite’ at Chapelle de l’Observance, Draguignan, France (2023). Venet also recently participated in a NFT exhibition organised by Sotheby’s, New York, that features works in which he has programmed an algorithm to drop angles randomly into an effondrement formation. 

Venet is the most internationally exhibited living French artist, with over 30 public sculpture exhibitions to date. His work is displayed in more than 70 museums worldwide, including esteemed institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C.; the Centre Pompidou, Paris; Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg; and the Musée d'Art Moderne et Contemporain (MAMCO), Geneva. Venet has also received commissions for permanent sculptures in cities including Auckland, Austin, Bergen, Berlin, Denver, Paris, Neu-Ulm, Nice, Seoul, Shenzhen, Tokyo and Toulouse.

Venet has been honoured with numerous awards, including France’s Chevalier de la Légion d’honneur. He has also received the 2013 International Julio González Sculpture Prize, the 2016 Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Sculpture Center (ISC), the 2017 Montblanc de la Culture Arts Patronage Award, the 2019 Prix François Morellet, and became a fellow of the Royal Society of Sculptors in London in 2020. The Venet Foundation, inaugurated in July 2014, aims to preserve the artist’s home in Le Muy, France, conserve the collection and ensure that Venet’s legacy endures.