CHANTAL JOFFE | Russian Doll (Bella)

Courtesy of the artist and Cheim & Read, New York

Chantal Joffe was born in 1969 in St. Albans and later moved to London, England, where she currently lives and works. She completed her BFA with honors at The Glasgow School of Art and earned her MFA at the Royal College of Art in London. Her works often depict larger than life-size portraits of women and children, painted wet-on-wet with bold, saturated colors and thick, visible brushstrokes in order to convey freshness and immediacy. She draws inspiration from various types of source materials - mainly magazines, fashion spreads, and photography – and various artists, including photographer Diane Arbus, German painter Paula Modersohn-Becker and poet Emily Dickinson. Joffe strives to display both the vulnerability and the strength of her female sitters through their powerful gazes and distorted bodies. Directness and honesty are hallmarks of her work, remarkably in her self-portraiture in which she exposes herself physically and psychologically to her audience. Her representations of motherhood and femininity, laced with abstraction and ambiguity, have at times met controversial reception.

From 2003, Joffe has exhibited her work in solo and group exhibitions around the world, including the United States, Italy, South Korea, Morocco, and Sweden; in 2006, she was awarded the Royal Academy of London’s Charles Wollaston Award for “the most distinguished work” in the Summer Exhibition.