Anish Kapoor

Lisson Gallery, London
Acquired by the present owner from the above

"I use red a lot. I've gone so far as to title a work My Red Homeland. It's true that in Indian culture red is a powerful thing; it is the color a bride wears; it is associated with the matriarchal, which is central to Indian psychology. So I can see what leads me there culturally, but there's more to it. One of the ways color has been used in art since the eighteenth century is to move, as in Turner, from color to light. My tendency is to go from color to darkness. Red has a very powerful blackness. This overt color, this open and visually beckoning color, also associates itself with a dark interior world. And that's the real reason I'm interested in it. Is that Indian? I don't know that it matters." - Anish Kapoor