“My life as an artist is an antidote to what I should have become. Kirili is a pseudonym. I left the conventional expectations of my family and chose to become an artist.”
Alain Kirili
(b. Paris, France, 1946, d. New York, NY, 2021)
Alain Kirili was a French-American artist recognized for his post-minimalist abstract sculptures in forged iron and his large-scale public sculptures. His work emphasizes an “aesthetics of spontaneity” and seeks its formal unity through the variety of materials he employs in a quest for “organic simplicity.” He has worked on the monumental aspects of sculpture in public spaces including at the campus of the University of Bourgogne in Dijon, in Paris and Grenoble and was commissioned by the Ministère de la Culture to install the sculpture of the 20th century in the Tuileries in Paris.
Kirili’s work is held in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Centre Pompidou, Paris; the Museum Ludwig, Cologne; and the Institut Valencià d’Art Modern, in Valencia, Spain, among numerous other institutions. In December of 2020, he was made a French Commandeur de l’Ordre de Arts et Lettres, receiving France’s highest cultural honor for his contribution to the arts.
Kirilii lived and worked in New York.
