Richard Deacon was born in 1949, in Bangor, Wales. He currently lives and works in London.
He studied at Somerset College of Art, Taunton, from 1968-69, St Martins School of Art, London, from 1969-72 and the Royal College of Art, London, from 1974-77. He studied part-time at Chelsea School of Art, London, in 1978.
From 1977-92, Deacon was a visiting lecturer in sculpture at various art schools, principally: Central School of Art & Design, London; Chelsea School of Art, London; Sheffield City Polytechnic; Bath Academy of Art and Winchester School of Art. He was visiting Lecturer at Ateliers 63, Haarlem and Amsterdam (1989-93); guest Professor at Hochschule für Angewande Kunst, Vienna (1995-96), and guest Lecturer on the MA Programme at Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, Jerusalem, in 1998. Deacon was Professor at École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts, Paris 1999 – 2009, and Professor at the Kunstakademie, Düsseldorf, Germany 2009 – 2015.
Deacon’s first one-man show was held in 1978 at The Gallery, Brixton, London. This led to a string of solo exhibitions, both nationally and internationally, notably at the Riverside Studios in 1984; Tate Gallery, London, in 1985; the Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, in 1988, and at Tate Gallery Liverpool in 1999. He was one of three artists to represent Wales at the 52nd Bienniale of Art in Venice. He has exhibited at the Lisson Gallery, London, since 1983, Marian Goodman Gallery, New York, since 1986 and Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris, since 2006. Since 1981 Deacon has participated in many key group exhibitions throughout the world. A major retrospective of his work The Missing Part was shown at the Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain, Strasbourg, in 2010, travelling to the Sprengel Museum in Hannover in 2011. Tate Britain mounted a major survey in 2014. Kunstmuseum Winterthur, Switzerland showed a ten year survey On The Other Side in 2015, this will tour to the Heydar Aliyev Centre in Baku, Azerbaijan and the Langen Foundation in Neuss, Germany in 2016. A full retrospective of his prints and drawings was presented at the Folkwang Museum in Essen, Germany in 2016.
Since the beginning of the 1970s, Deacon has written extensively on his own practice and in relation to contemporary art in general. A selection of these texts was re-published in the catalogue to The Missing Part, and a Spanish edition of complete writings was published in 2012 by the Universidad Pública de Navarra. So, And, If, But – Selected Writing 1970 – 2012 was published (in English and German editions) by the Richter Verlag in 2013. Richard Deacon: In Between a ninety minute film by the film maker Claudia Schmidt was put on general release in April this year.
Richard Deacon won the Turner Prize in 1987 and the Robert Jakobsen Prize, Museum Würth, Künzelsau, Germany, in 1995. In 1997 he was awarded Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres, France, elected a Royal Academician in 1998 and made CBE in 1999. In 2005 the University of Leicester awarded him an honorary doctorate. He was elected a member of the Akademie der Kunst in Berlin in 2010.
