Vanessa Beecroft

This is a retrospective survey compiled in collaboration with the artist - devoted to the female body and the theme of loneliness.



“In an elegant mixture of abstraction and empathy, Thomas Kellein provides a survey of over ten years of Beecroft performances.” DIE ZEIT

“This book—compact, vivid, and designed with beguiling ease—brings her work tantalizingly close.” Frankfurter Rundschau

A survey of the Vanessa Beecroft's widely acclaimed oeuvre produced in close collaboration with the artist - featuring a number previously unpublished early drawings.


Vanessa Beecroft (*1969 in Genoa) is undeniably one of the brightest stars in the international art scene today. The theme of feminine perception and self-perception has been a central focus of her work since 1993. Since then, Vanessa Beecroft has presented her predominantly nude models, who are permitted neither to speak nor to move appreciably, in more than fifty cities around the world. The contemplative silence of the protagonists in her performances, photographs, and videos evokes an impression of ritual.
This publication presents a retrospective survey of Vanessa Beecroft's work compiled in collaboration with the artist: photographs, videos, and a large group of previously unpublished drawings devoted to the female body and the theme of loneliness. These highly appealing works feature single figures or parts of bodies, with spindly legs, crooked arms, and small, sometimes childlike heads. Fragile and alone, they float in pictorial space - lasciviously on occasion, but more often with a subtle eroticism.