Marc Quinn is an artist whose work deals with art and science, the human body and the perception of beauty. He is considered one of the major figures of the Young British Artists.

 

Quinn began his sculptural education in 1983 working for Barry Flanagan and, soon after, graduated from the University of Cambridge with a degree in History and History of Art. He came to artistic prominence in 1991 with his sculpture Self, a cast of the artist’s head made from ten pints of his own frozen blood. This was first shown at the Joplin/Grob Gallery and then the Saatchi Gallery in 1992. His first solo exhibition was at South London Gallery in 1998.

 

Notable public commissions include, 1+1=3 a 20-metre artificial rainbow, for the Liverpool Biennial and also Planet, in 2008, a monumental modelling of the artist’s son for The Gardens by The Bay, Singapore. Another major work was Alison Lapper Pregnant, a 3.55-metre-high marble sculpture depicting the artist Alison Lapper and exploring classical ideas of beauty for the Fourth Plinth, Trafalgar Square London, in 2005. This was later reimagined as an inflatable sculpture for the 2012 Paralympic Games in London.