THE ANGELS.- The video artist United States Bill Viola, a pioneer in new media, video and immersive art installations, has died at the age of 73 after a long battle with Alzheimer’s disease, his official website announced in a statement on Saturday.
“Bill Viola, one of the world’s leading contemporary artists (…) passed away peacefully at his home” on Friday in Long Beach, California, the statement said.
He leaves behind his wife and long-time collaborator, Kira Perov, head of the Bill Viola studio, and two sons, Blake and Andrei.
Considered one of the pioneers of his art, he had been diagnosed with this neurodegenerative disease since 2012, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Born in Nueva York In 1951, Viola studied painting and electronic music at Syracuse University (New York State). He quickly became passionate about video art in its early days.
He artist He was then inspired by the Renaissance painters, Goya and Jérôme Bosch, as well as by the Book of the Dead of ancient Egypt.
Perov said of his partner in 2017, on the sidelines of an exhibition in Florence, that he had been “very influenced by the extreme emotions that were in these beautiful paintings” of the Renaissance. “It was about grief, about mourning, and that really shaped his work,” he added.
In 2014, he had his first retrospective in France with an exhibition at the Grand Palais in Paris, which covered forty years of the career of one of the most celebrated representatives of video art.
Source: AP