Ansel Krut South African, b. 1959

Ansel Krut, born in Cape Town, South Africa, in 1959, studied medicine for 2 years before switching to Fine Art and he graduated with a BA from the University of the Witwatersrand in 1982. After a scholarship to the Cité des Arts in Paris he completed an MA in painting at the Royal College of Art in London. He was the Abbey Major Scholar in Painting at the British School at Rome in 1986/87 and then stayed on in Italy for a subsequent 3 years, returning to London in 1990. He now lives and works in London interspersed with extended stays in Los Angeles. Krut’s work remains informed by the years he spent growing up in South Africa, his art retains what Ed Krcma, in a catalogue essay referred to as “an unapologetic will to insubordination” with imagery that has “arisen from a ferment of intermingled sources: from the enchanted collective narratives of folklore, to the differently dark ruins of history.” Alfred Mac Adam, in a review in the Brooklyn Rail, 2019, writes: “Ansel Krut's extraordinary paintings take us back to 20th century existential angst and its unending inquiry into identity, fate, and self-determination. His painterly style may seem casual, crude, and ludic, but this is work of high seriousness and deep moral content.”