Cindy Sherman: Early Works, 1975-80

Stills is excited to announce an exhibition showcasing seminal early works by Cindy Sherman, one of the most influential artists of the last 40 years.

The exhibition at Stills will present, Untitled (Murder Mystery People), some of Sherman’s earliest self-portrait photographs that were made in 1976, the year she graduated from the art department at the State University College at Buffalo, USA. The exhibition will also include the 16mm film, Doll Clothes, (1975) and a selection of works from Untitled Film Stills (1977-80), the series for which Sherman first gained international recognition.

Throughout her career, Sherman has worked with photography to picture herself in a range of guises and personas. Drawing upon images from art history, film, TV, magazines and the internet, she has become well known and hugely influential for her explorations into the construction of contemporary identity and the nature of representation.

Cindy Sherman: Early Works, 1975-80 is timed to coincide with a major retrospective of the artist’s work at the National Portrait Gallery, London. The exhibition at Stills has been co-curated with Sebastien Montabonel, founder of Montabonel & Partners. Stills is grateful to The SAMMLUNG VERBUND Collection, Vienna and Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin for the loan of works to the exhibition.

Cindy Sherman was born in 1954 in Glen Ridge, New Jersey, USA and lives and works in New York. Considered one of the most influential artists of her generation, she came to prominence in the late 1970s with a group of artists known as the Pictures Generation. She will be the subject of a one-person exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, London, in 2019. Her 2012 retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, traveled to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and the Dallas Museum of Art. Additional recent exhibitions include Fosun Foundation, Shanghai; the inaugural exhibition at the Broad Museum, Los Angeles; me Collectors Room Berlin / Stiftung Olbricht; Sammlung Goetz, Munich; and Untitled Horrors, Astrup Fearnley Museum, Oslo, which traveled to Moderna Museet, Stockholm, and Kunsthause Zurich. Sherman has participated in four Venice Biennales, co-curating a section at the 55thexhibition in 2013. Additionally, her work has been included in five iterations of the Whitney Biennial, two Biennales of Sydney, and the 1983 Documenta. She has been the recipient of the Praemium Imperiale, an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award, a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, and a Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship.

Sebastien Montabonel is the founder and partner Montabonel & Partners, an independent art consultancy specializing in Post-War & Contemporary Art and cultural strategy. In recent years they have advised governments on cultural policy, initiated foundations and private museums, devised strategies for artists’ estates, run international think tanks with leading figures in the art world,managed major curatorial projects in the form of international exhibitions and education events such as international symposia, as well as transacted on a large number of seminal artworks.