Atalanta Xanthe ((b. 1996) grew up in the UK and New Mexico, USA, and now lives and works in London. Xanthe received her Undergraduate at University of Oxford, Ruskin School of Art (2014-2016) and her Postgraduate MFA: New York Academy of Art (2016-2018). On graduating, at 21, she became the New York Academy of Art’s youngest Fellow (2018-2019). Her work has been exhibited extensively in the UK, USA, Italy, France, and Germany. Notable solo exhibitions include ‘Age Gap: 1494-2024’, Alice Black, London, UK (2022); and ‘Scaffold for the Imagination’, Galleria Alessandro Albanese, Milan, Italy (2023). Xanthe is the recipient of the prestigious Ruth Borchard Self-Portrait Competition (2013) and the David Schafer Portrait Award (2017). Xanthe is featured in the permanent collections of the Ruth Borchard Collection, UK and the Marval Collection, Italy.
Xanthe’s is a world of fantastical surrealism - a beguiling collision of nature and artifice. Her painterly dramas, tantalisingly ambiguous, are a space for free-wheeling and re- imagining. Xanthe is influenced by a wide array of sources from ancient manuscripts, stagecraft and the world of theatre; mischievously splicing aspects of her own biography with elements of the art historical canon and popular culture to create plots which are permeable, stretchy and, at times, magnificently unhinged. A practice rooted in drawing, Xanthe teases out her compositions and narratives over the course of many preliminary studies before embarking on the final painting. Knowingly riffing on the scale and seriality of History Paintings, a genre traditionally depicting male heroism or grand events, Xanthe’s ability to vault, jump headlong, sprint or glide effortlessly across the canvas is testament to her love of paint and the purist act of applying pigment to canvas in the name of storytelling. Xanthe’s singular stylistic flair and clearly identifiable hand constitute a feminist reclamation of narrative through paint.
Xanthe accounts, “Having been raised in a household of scientists, I need the stories I tell to anchor to reality. But the anchor chain needs to be long - I’m contrarian by nature. I love facts: documented ones, like strange historical occurrences, weird bits of biology, or visual ones, like Andreas Mantegna’s obsessive need for order. Each painting coalesces after a great hoovering up of information”. Xanthe’s latest series, ‘Age Gap: 1494-2024’, uses the medieval prayer book Book of Hours as both a visual and conceptual foundation. Xanthe’s paintings, like their mediaeval forebears, ignore modernist separations between serious and decorative, contemplative and humorous, transcendent, and the absurd. Though grounded in centuries-old imagery, these paintings are timeless in their northern-renaissance technique and fresh in their reflections on navigating romance, friendship and hierarchy as a young woman.
Solo exhibitions include ‘Age Gap’ 1494-2024, Alice Black, London, UK (2024); ‘Scaffold for the Imagination’, Galleria Alessandro Albanese, Milan, Italy (2023); ‘Uteroverse’, Alice Black, London, UK (2022);
Selected group exhibitions include ‘New Life’ Curated by Danica Lundy & Alexi Worth, Platform, New York, USA (2024); ‘The Cave of the Mind’ Curated by Marcelle Joseph, Ione & Mann, London, UK (2024); ‘Small Hours’, Alice Black, London, UK (2023); ‘Seven’, Alice Black, London, UK (2022); ‘Future Fossils’, Alice Black, London, UK (2021); ‘Chubb Fellowship Show’, Wilkinson Hall, New York, USA (2020); ‘Chubb Fellowship Show’, Wilkinson Hall, New York, USA (2019); ‘While Supplies Last’, Bellevue Museum, Washington, USA (2019); ‘Thesis Exhibition’, Wilkinson Hall, New York, USA (2018); ‘Take Home a Nude’, Sotheby’s, New York, USA (2018); ‘Chubb Show’, Sagamore Hotel, Miami, USA ‘Spring Crush’, Eva Contemporary, Pennsylvania, USA (2018); (2017); ‘Manchester International Festival’, Manchester, UK (2017); ‘Summer Exhibition’, Leipzig International Artist Programme, Leipzig, Germany (2017); ‘Leipzig Summer Residency Exhibition’, New York Academy of Art, New York, USA (2017); ‘Ruth Borchard: Next Generation’, Piano Nobile, London, UK (2016); ‘St Hugh’s College Artists Exhibition’, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK (2015); ‘United Society of Artists Exhibition’, Cork Street, London, UK (2014); ‘Ruskin Show’, Oxford, UK (2014); ‘Ruth Borchard Self-Portrait Competition’, Piano Nobile, London, UK (2013);
Highlights and Collections
Xanthe has been awarded the Chubb Fellow/Artist in Residence at the New York Academy of Art, USA (2019); New York Academy of Art Merit Scholarship, USA (2017); David Schafer Portrait Award (2017); Leipzig International Art Program Residency, Germany (2017); Merit Bursary, Oxford University, UK (2014); Ruth Borchard Self-Portrait Competition, London, UK (2013).