Andres Serrano

ANDRES SERRANO  American, born 1950

Andres Serrano is considered one of the most important contemporary artists working today.

His work focuses on universal themes such as bodily fluids, religion, sex and death. Serrano is most famous for his seminal 1987 work Piss Christ, an image of a plastic crucifix submerged in urine.

The photograph was the subject of a heated congressional debate in which politicians and religious leaders directly threatened Serrano's right to public funding. The scandal resulted in an anti-obscenity clause that prevented “offensive” artworks from National Endowment of the Arts support and made Serrano into a champion of artistic freedom. In 2007 Serrano made controversial headlines again when graphic photographs from his History of Sex series were vandalized in Sweden by members of a purported neo-Nazi group.

With his deeply beautiful photographs, Andres Serrano has challenged the fundamental taboos of the western world. Religion, sex and death are recurrent themes in his numerous series of photographs, frequently juxtaposing the grotesque and horrifying with scrupulously orchestrated compositions and attractive colours with great aesthetic precision.

Public collections include:
Allen Art Museum, Oberlin, Ohio, USA
Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, USA
Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, Maryland, USA
capc musée d'art contemporain,  Bordeaux, France
Centro Cultural Arte Contemporaneo, Mexico City, Mexico
Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo, Sevilla, Spain
Cintas Foundation, Miami, Florida, USA
Fonds Regional d'Art Contemporain, Cluny, France
Institute of Contemporary Art, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Institute of Contemporary Art Boston, Massachusetts, USA
Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Israel
Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Fort Worth, Texas, USA
Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain
Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain
Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Illinois, USA
Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb, Croatia
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, Australia
New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, New York, USA
Spencer Museum of Art, Lawrence, Kansas, USA
The University of Alabama, Birmingham, Alabama, USA
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, USA