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JANUARY 02, 2026 | The Indian Eye 39

GLOBAL ARTIST OF 2025

Anish Kapoor’s Global

Command in 2025

From museum retrospectives to political interventions and market dominance, Anish Kapoor

stood as India’s most powerful artistic presence worldwide in 2025.

n 2025, Anish Kapoor occupied a Kapoor’s market presence ex-
position few artists—Indian or oth- tended beyond auctions into carefully
Ierwise—can claim: simultaneously curated collaborations. His partner-
shaping global conversations on art, ship with Rémy Martin resulted in a
politics, and perception while main- limited-edition XO cognac decanter
taining formidable market strength. and accompanying artwork titled Pa-
At a time when contemporary art is gan Gold. Rather than diluting his
increasingly fragmented between ac- artistic identity, the collaboration re-
tivism, spectacle, and commerce, Ka- inforced it, connecting his exploration
poor managed to operate convincingly of material depth and luminosity with
across all three, reaffirming his status craftsmanship and heritage. In 2025,
as the most internationally significant Kapoor demonstrated how an artist
Indian artist of the year. could navigate the luxury world without
The most striking moment of Ka- surrendering conceptual seriousness.
poor’s 2025 practice came in August, This balance between experi-
when he partnered with Greenpeace mentation, activism, and commerce
for BUTCHERED, a large-scale in- is central to understanding Kapoor’s
stallation mounted on a Shell gas plat- dominance. While many artists excel
form. The work consisted of a mas- in one arena, Kapoor moved fluently
sive canvas drenched in a blood-like across all of them. He remained a fix-
substance, confronting viewers with ture in museum programming, a force
the violence embedded in continued in political art, and a reliable presence
fossil fuel extraction. It was a visceral in the global art market. The Hurun
intervention, deliberately staged far India Art List’s ranking of Kapoor as
from the white cube, and emblematic the top-selling Indian artist of 2025
of Kapoor’s refusal to separate aes- merely formalized what was already
thetics from ethical urgency. As noted evident across institutions and mar-
by Ocula, the project reinforced his kets worldwide.
long-standing engagement with pow- Underlying all this activity was
er, violence, and moral responsibility. a remarkable continuity of vision.
This activist turn did not replace Kapoor continued to explore per-
Kapoor’s institutional presence; it ception, the body, absence, and the
amplified it. In October, The Jewish ing on his printmaking practice. Of- debates about public art, state power, void—whether through raw pigment,
Museum in New York opened Anish ten overshadowed by his monumental and the ownership of symbols. Once reflective steel, or politically charged
Kapoor: Early Works, the first U.S. public works, Kapoor’s prints revealed again, Kapoor found himself at the gestures. His use of materials such as
museum exhibition devoted to his for- another dimension of his thinking: center of cultural friction, unwilling to Vantablack, alongside older sculptur-
mative pigment sculptures and early quieter, more intimate, yet equally let his work be neutralized or co-opted. al vocabularies, signalled an artist still
works on paper. Running through concerned with thresholds, depth, and Crucially, this intellectual and testing the limits of seeing and mean-
February 2026, the show traced the the instability of form. Together, these political prominence was matched ing rather than settling into reputation.
origins of Kapoor’s lifelong preoccu- exhibitions confirmed that Kapoor’s by sustained market strength. In the By the end of 2025, Anish Ka-
pation with material, void, and per- relevance in 2025 was not retrospec- first half of 2025, Kapoor’s works poor’s position was unambiguous. He
ception. The raw pigment pieces— tive nostalgia, but an ongoing re-ex- performed strongly at major auc- was not simply India’s most visible art-
powdered forms that seem both bodily amination of a living oeuvre. tion houses. Sotheby’s sold Untitled ist on the global stage, but one of the
and immaterial—reminded audiences Kapoor’s public visibility also ex- (2011) for over $480,000, while Mirror few contemporary figures capable of
that Kapoor’s global fame rests on a tended into controversy. In one widely Glow (Spanish Gold) (2017) fetched shaping discourse across continents.
rigorously experimental foundation reported episode, he considered legal $482,600 at Phillips, far exceeding its In a year defined by uncertainty and
laid decades earlier. action after U.S. border agents posed estimate. These results underscored confrontation, Kapoor’s work insist-
Simultaneously, Anish Kapoor: with his iconic Cloud Gate sculpture consistent demand for his mirror and ed that art remain a space of intensi-
Dissolving Margins opened at the in Chicago, an act he condemned as stainless-steel works, which continue ty, risk, and moral engagement—and
Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at emblematic of what he termed “fas- to anchor the upper-mid-range con- that insistence is what made him the
Washington State University, focus- cist America.” The incident reignited temporary art market. top Indian artist globally in 2025.

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