Jeff Koons

Jeff Koons (born January 21, 1955), is an American artist. He is noted for his use of kitsch imagery using painting, sculpture and other forms, often in large scale. Jeff Koons was born in York, Pennsylvania; as a teenager he revered Salvador Dalí, to the extent of visiting him at the St. Regis Hotel in New York City. Koons attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Maryland Institute College of Art, and studied painting. After college he worked as a Wall Street commodities broker, whilst establishing himself as an artist. He gained recognition in the 1980s, and subsequently set up a factory-like studio in a SoHo loft on the corner of Houston and Broadway in New York. This had over 30 staff, each assigned to a different aspect of producing his work—in a similar mode to both Andy Warhol's Factory and many Renaissance artists. Koons' early work was in the form of conceptual sculpture, one of the best-known being Three Ball 50/50 Tank, 1985, consisting of three basket...