Bernar Venet

**Bernar Venet(( Born in 1941 in the South of France, Bernar Venet displayed a strong attraction to art from a very early age. At 17 he moved to Nice and worked as a set designer at the Opéra de Nice. After completing his military service, he dedicated himself entirely to making art. In 1966, he decided to settle in New York, where he developed a body of work incorporating mathematic and scientific texts that established him as one of the pioneers of Conceptual Art.

Venet’s career has been marked by a long series of milestones. In 1994, the then Mayor of Paris Jacques Chirac invited the artist to exhibit twelve sculptures from his “Indeterminate Line” series on the Champ de Mars. Following the success of that special Paris show, a travelling exhibition was mounted that took his work to Asia, Europe, and South and North America. In 2008, Sotheby’s invited Venet to show 25 large sculptures on the grounds of the Isleworth Country Club in Florida, the first time the venerable auction house had exhibited a single artist at the venue. In May of 2010, President Nicolas Sarkozy of France inaugurated a 30-metre-high sculpture to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Nice’s reunification with France. In 2011, Bernar Venet became only the 4th contemporary artist to be invited to install his work on the grounds of the world-renowned Château de Versailles. In October 2019, his “Arc Majeur”, which soars to a hight of 60 metres, was inaugurated in Belgium, on the E411 highway between Namur and Luxembourg. It has been hailed as the world’s ‘largest public artwork’.

Venet had his first retrospective in Krefeld, Germany in 1970, followed by the New York Cultural Center in 1971. The artist followed this up with contributions to a number of major art events, including “Documenta VI” in Kassel in 1977, and the biennials of Paris, Venice, and São Paulo. Venet has also mounted major retrospective exhibitions at the Museum Küppersmühle für Moderne Kunst, Duisburg, and Kunsthalle Darmstadt, Germany; the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul, the Busan Museum of Modern Art, and the Seoul Museum of Art, South Korea; the Institut Valencià d’Art Modern (IVAM), Valencia, Spain; Műcsarnok, Budapest, Hungary; and most recently in France at the Musée d’Art Moderne et d’Art Contemporain (MAMAC), Nice, at the Musée d’art contemporain (MAC), Lyon, in 2018-19, as well as his largest retrospective to date, at the Kunsthalle Berlin, Tempelhof, in 2022. His return to the Parisien scene in 2023 was marked by two monumental installations on the Place Vendôme. In 2025, Venet has turned his attention to institutional exhibitions, with concurrent shows at the Musée Picasso, Antibes, France, and at the Guangdong Museum of Art in Guangzhou, China.

Over 200 monographs and studies on the artist’s body of work have been published in multiple languages, with texts by a roster of noted art historians. A biography of the artist, by Catherine Francblin, was published in 2022, and retraces his long life. His works are seen in more than 70 museums worldwide, including such venerable institutions as the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Centre Pompidou, Paris; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C.; the Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg; and the Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain (MAMCO), Geneva.

The Venet Foundation was opened in July of 2014 in Le Muy in southeastern France, where the greater part of the collection is located. The foundation is dedicated to preserving this unique group of artworks and ensuring that Bernar Venet’s oeuvre lives on after him.

The artist has also been awarded a number of commissions to create monumental sculptures that are now permanently installed in Auckland, Austin, Bergen, Berlin, Bonn, Denver, Neu-Ulm, Nice, Norfolk, Paris, Seoul, Shenzhen, San Francisco, Tokyo, and Toulouse.

Bernar Venet is considered the most internationally exhibited living French artist, with at least 30 public shows of his sculpture in major cities around the world.