Richard Prince

*1949

Richard Prince was born in 1949 in the Panama Canal Zone, which at the time was administered by the United States. He grew up in Boston, Massachusetts, and moved to New York City in the 1970s, where he has lived and worked ever since.
To earn his living, he initially began working for the publishing empire Time-Life Inc. In his responsibility of cutting out press clippings of various articles for editors, he came into close contact with the glossy media formats of US pop culture. Richard Prince achieved his artistic breakthrough by re-photographing “found footage,” images found in newspapers and brochures that he transferred into new contexts of meaning through minimal interventions such as enlarging, cropping, or superimposing.

To this day, his work is marked by a pronounced interest in contemporary media culture and a fascination with the appropriation of other images. Characteristic of his oeuvre is a deadpan humour that combines attraction and critique.
Prince is counted, together with artists such as Cindy Sherman, Sherrie Levine and Laurie Simmons, among the “Pictures Generation,” known for its artistic interest in the intersection of reality and manipulation. Prince’s works are represented in major museum collections and have been shown at international major exhibitions such as the Whitney Biennial in New York and the Venice Biennale.