Anish Kapoor - Biography

Biography

Anish Kapoor was born in Bombay, India to a Jewish mother whose family immigrated from Baghdad when she was a few months old. "She had an Indian-Jewish upbringing. Her father, his grandfather, was the cantor in the synagogue in Pune. At the time, the Jewish community in Mumbai was quite large, mostly consisting of Baghdadi Jews." His father, from a Hindu Punjabi family, was a hydrographer in the Indian Navy.

Kapoor spent his early years first in Mumbai, and then in Dehra Dun at the The Doon School, which he hated attending. In 1971-1973, he traveled to Israel with one of his two brothers, initially living on a kibbutz. He began to study electrical engineering, but had trouble with mathematics and quit after six months. In Israel, he decided to become an artist. In 1973, he left for Britain to attend Hornsey College of Art and Chelsea School of Art and Design. There he found a role model in Paul Neagu, an artist who provided a meaning to what he was doing. Kapoor went on to teach at Wolverhampton Polytechnic in 1979 and in 1982 was Artist in Residence at the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool. He has lived and worked in London since the early 1970s.

Kapoor is the brother of Canadian-based academic Ilan Kapoor.