1956, Kavadarci, Macedonia
Kite of All Kites, 1986/2019
Straw, wooden construction, 400 x 300 x 120 cm
Acquisition: Purchased
Reference: 03653
Biography
In 1981 Stefanov graduated from the Academy of Arts in Belgrade, where he also studied as a post-graduate (1983-5). From the outset of his career, Stefanov treated sculpture as an object or an installation of objects. In the mid-1980s he set up several installations and assemblages made of cotton, straw, grass, clay and wood in public sites in Kavadarci and galleries in Skopje, Belgrade, and Zagreb. In 1986 he held a solo show at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Skopje, an installation with “Kites”, made of straw. In 1988 he settled in London, where the narrative aspects of his work shifted from mythology to religion. In the early 1990s, he produced a series of objects and installations entitled Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones in the form of angels’ wings and discs, executed in straw and boards or tree trunks and branches set up in the Whitechapel Art Gallery (Broadgate Sculpture Project, 1989), London, the Grizedale Forest (1990) in Cumbria and in Cirencester (1991). In 1993, together with the sculptor Petre Nikoloski (b 1959), he exhibited in the Macedonian section of the 45th Venice Biennale. In 2019 a retrospective exhibition Gligor Stefanov: Grabbing the Space took place at the Museum of Contemporary Art Skopje. (z.p.)
