Biography
KEN CURRIE (b 1960)
Ken Currie studied at the Glasgow School of Art from 1978–1983 and rose to attention within a generation of painters known as the ‘New Glasgow Boys’ in the 1980s. He is renowned for his unsettling portrayal of the human figure, with the artist’s rich, luminous paintings depicting narratives on mysterious rites, rituals, and quasi-medical practices, offering a meditation on humanity and violence in its many guises.
In 1987, Ken Currie completed a powerful series of large scale history paintings for the People’s Palace in Glasgow, commemorating the massacre of the Calton Weavers. Through the 1990's, deeply affected by humanitarian events in Eastern Europe, Currie's works evolved, his focus shifting to confront ideas of mortality and corruption, both physical and moral. Over the last 20 years Currie's work has addressed the horrors of the contemporary world, without shying away from their brutality or grotesque nature, alongside notable commissions. In 2009 Currie was commissioned to paint the theoretical scientist Peter Higgs following his receipt of the Nobel Prize, with the painting installed at The University of Edinburgh. In 2023, the National Galleries of Scotland acquired Ken Currie's painting of Professor Dame Sue Black, Baroness Black of Strome, The Unknown Man, 2019.
Ken Currie has exhibited widely internationally, including a 2013 solo exhibition at the National Galleries of Scotland, which also commissioned his painting Three Oncologists, 2002. Currie’s work is held in major public collections including Tate, London; National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh; New York Public Library; Imperial War Museum, London; Campbelltown Arts Centre, New South Wales; Yale Center for British Art, New Haven; Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon; and the British Council, London. Ken Currie: Paintings and Writings, compiled and edited by art historian Tom Normand, was published in 2023, offering a rare insight into Currie’s challenging and enigmatic art, providing access to his private studio journals for the first time.
