David Breuer-Weil (b. 1965 - )
Inflation
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Pencil and gold leaf on paper
43 x 66 cm (16 ⁷/₈ x 26 inches)
Signed and dated twice in the centre
Executed in 2022
Artist's Biography
David Breuer-Weil was born and grew up in North London. In 1985, Breuer-Weil went to Central Saint Martin’s School of Art. Later he went to Clare College, Cambridge, where he soon became involved with fringe theatrical and artistic groups. After leaving Cambridge, he was awarded a bursary at Sotheby’s and he spent the next year training in various artistic departments and disciplines, starting with Old Master Paintings and ending in the Impressionist and Modern Art Department. There is little doubt that the years he spent in direct physical contact with works by the masters of the past enhanced his knowledge of both technique and his own artistic direction.
During this period he combined working for an auction house with his own artistic practice, creating a large body of small-scale Neracian works on paper. It was also during this period that he developed the personal iconography that would come to characterise his later works and culminate in the Project some years later. The Neracian world inspired a documentary about Breuer-Weil, The King of Nerac, which examines the relationship Breuer-Weil has with the imaginary world of Nerac that he has ruled since he was a young boy.
Breuer-Weil had already conceived the idea of painting the Project as early as 1989, but it took several years to achieve his vision. The period 1997-2001 marked the first intensive period of Project painting, and culminated in the exhibition Project 1 at the Roundhouse for which John Russell-Taylor of The Times hailed him a "colossal talent". After Project 2 in 2003, The Jewish Museum of Art staged Project 3 (2007), an exhibition of 50 monumental paintings, in an industrial building in Covent Garden, recognising the works’ uniqueness and significant contribution to the history of British and international figurative painting.
From 2007 to 2011, Breuer-Weil worked on Project 4 (consisting of over 80 paintings and 200 drawings), which was exhibited to much acclaim at The Vaults under Waterloo in February 2013 and visited by nearly 6,000 people.
In 2010, Breuer-Weil returned to sculpture, and Visitor I was exhibited at Sotheby’s Beyond Limits, Chatsworth, with works by Ron Arad, Marc Quinn, Damien Hirst and other leading artists. In 2011, he was invited to submit another work to the exhibition, thus Visitor II was born. Alien was installed at the next incarnation of Sotheby’s Chatsworth exhibition in 2013. Breuer-Weil’s monumental work has also been seen on Hampstead Heath and in public spaces around London.
Breuer-Weil currently lives and works in London. David Breuer-Weil: Radical Visionary (Skira, 2011), the first monograph on the artist, is now available online and in selected bookshops.
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