KOSUTH Joseph (Toledo, 1945)International Local. A che punto sei?

Stampa Stiav, Firenze

The American artist Joseph Kosuth is one of the pioneers of conceptual art. In the years between 1955 and 1962 he attended the Toledo Museum School of Art, the Cleveland Art Institute and the School of Visual arts, where he completed his studies in 1967. Also in 1967 he founded and directed the Museum of Normal Art (formerly Lannis Galery) and began publishing reviews for Arts Magazine in New York.

In 1970 he joined the editorial staff of Art-Language. In 1971 he began studying anthropology and philosophy at the New School for Social Research in New York. In 1975 he became co-editor of The Fox magazine. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s he travelled to America and many European countries where he gave lectures at prestigious universities and was artistic curator of events such as Marxist Perspectives, New York, 1977; Semiotext(e),New York, 1980; Transitional Objects, Lyon, 1985

His numerous awards include the BrandeisAward in 1990, the Frederick Weisman Award in 1991, an Honourable Mention at the Venice Biennale in 1993 and the title of Chevalier de l'Ordredes Arts et des Lettres awarded to him in 1993 by the French government. In 1999 he received the Laurea Honoris Causa in Literature and Philosophy from the University of Bologna and in 2003 the Cross of First Class Knight of Merit of the Republic of Austria, the highest honour in science and the arts. In 2012 Kosuth received the Class des Arts de l'Académie Royale from the Royal Academy of Sciences, Letters and Fine Arts of Belgium. In 2015, the Instituto Superior de Arte of the University of Havana awarded him a Doctorate Honoris Causa during the XXII Havana Bienial where he exhibited a large installatio

His major conceptual exhibitions include: Clear, square, glass, leaning, 1965, in which each word is printed on a sheet of glass - One and three chairs, 1965, where the linguistic definition of a chair is flanked by a real chair and a life-size photograph of it - Art as idea, a series of works, begun in 1966, consisting of negative photostatic copies of linguistic definitions), Kosuth elaborated installations and projects, such as Zero & not, 1985, in which the walls were covered with erased Freud texts;  Modus operandi, 1985; The play of the unsayable. Ludwig Wittgenstein and the art of the 20th century, 1989, Vienna, Wiener Secession; Zeno at the edge of the known world, 1993, at the Venice Biennale, with honourable mention. His publications include Art after philosophy, 1969 and Art after philosophy and after: collected writings, 1966-1990, 1991.