Christian Boltanski

Christian Boltanski was born in paris, France in 1944.

Boltanski was a French sculptor, photographer, painter and film maker.

Boltanski in 1986, began creating mixed media/ material instillations with light as an essential concept. Using tin boxes, altar-like construction of framed and manipulated photographs of Jewish school children taken in Vienna in 1931 and was then used as a grim reminder of the mass murder of Jews by the Nazis. Boltanski’s work featured in an exhibition at Basel, Museum Gegenwartskunst, 1989. His enormous instillation titled ‘No man’s land’ (2010) at the Park Avenue Armory in New York, is a great example of how his constructions and installations trace the lives of the lost and forgotten.

 

Boltanski has participated in over 150 art exhibitions throughout the world. He has also had solo exhibitions at the New Museum (1988), the Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein, Magasin 3 in Stockholm, the La Maison Rouge gallery, Institut Mathildenhohe, the Kewenig Galerie, The muse d’art et d’histoire du judaisme and many more.

 

In 2002, Boltanski made the installation "Totentanz II", a Shadow Installation with copper figures, for the underground Centre for International Light Art in Unna, Germany.

 

His awards won include;

 

• 20.07 billionéateurs sans frontières award for visual arts by Cultures France^[6]
• 2007  Praemium Imperiale Award by the Japan Art Association^[6]
• 2001 Goslarer Kaiserring, Goslar, Germany^[6]
• 2001 Kunstpreis, given by Nord/LB, Braunschweig, Germany