Untitled (The Brutal, Relentless, Joyful, Fearful, End of it All)

Barbara Kruger

Conceptual artist Barbara Kruger rose to prominence in the 1980s for prints that juxtaposed black-and-white found photographs with bold, invented texts. In her most famous works, she prints wry and earnest slogans—“I shop therefore I am” and “Your body is a battleground,” for example—in thick, white Futura lettering against red text boxes that offset cryptic images from magazines and other mass-media sources. In 1982, Kruger represented the United States at the Venice Biennale, and in 2005, she was awarded the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement. She has also shown at Documenta and the Whitney Biennial. Kruger has enjoyed solo exhibitions at some of the world’s most prestigious museums and created site-specific installations for the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. A keen sense of social engagement pervades all Kruger’s work, which has also appeared on billboards, bus cards, posters, and train station platforms, as well as in parks and other public spaces. Her work has sold for six figures on the secondary market.