Jeff Koons (American, 1955 - )

  Born in York, Pennsylvania, Jeff Koons became one of the better-known contemporary artists in New York, focusing on pop-art relative to the consumer culture. He transforms items of mass market appeal, especially kitsch, into high art.

He studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Maryland Institute College of Art and in 1977 arrived in New York from where he became an art world celebrity. His studio has been an immense SoHo loft on the corner of Houston and Broadway in New York, and his work expresses his fascination with commercial packaging and children's toys. Running his studio like a corporation, he has 35 full-time assistants, each assigned to a different aspect of his output--sculpture and small and large-scale paintings.