ART & ARTISTS: Barbara Kruger

The text-based artist is back with a mobile exhibition in New York. Here the self-confessed ‘news junkie’ explains why we shouldn’t be shocked by recent events and why she’s putting her latest work in a skatepark

7 pages of Kruger artworks

Short biography and 7 artworks

Barbara Kruger is an American conceptual artist and collagist associated with The Pictures Generation. Most of her work consists of black-and-white photographs, overlaid with declarative captions, stated in white-on-red Futura Bold Oblique or Helvetica Ultra Condensed text. The phrases in her works often include pronouns such as "you", "your", "I", "we", and "they", addressing cultural constructions of power, identity, consumerism, and sexuality. She is known for her blend of type and picture that passes on an immediate feminist cultural activism. Her works inspect generalizations and the practices of industrialism with text layered over broad communications pictures.

Gallery of artworks

Barbara Kruger Biography
The work of Barbara Kruger, with its black-and-white photographic images overlaid with declarative statements in Futura Bold typeface, is distinctive for its graphic qualities and directness of message.

Barbara Kruger
Born: January 26, 1945; Newark, New Jersey, United States
Nationality: American
Art Movement: Feminist Art, Conceptual Art
Field: design, installation, photography, collage
Influenced by: Marlene Dumas
Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Kruger

Life, career and artistic influences

Life and influences on her art

July 2012
The mass media artist has been refashioning our idioms into sharp-edged cultural critiques for three decades—and now brings her work to the Hirshhorn

By Dr. Tom Folland

The Art History Archive - Feminist Art

Barbara Kruger’s Artwork Speaks Truth to Power
The mass media artist has been refashioning our idioms into sharp-edged cultural critiques for three decades—and now brings her work to the Hirshhorn

Ron Rosenbaum
Ron Rosenbaum

July 2012