The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth is about to get a little more daring. For the first time in the U.S., the work of one of the world’s most audacious figure painters, Jenny Saville, takes center stage with “Jenny Saville: The Anatomy of Painting,” running from Oct. 12, 2025, to Jan. 18, 2026.
Organized by London’s National Portrait Gallery and curated by Senior Curator of Contemporary Collections Sarah Howgate, the exhibition lands at the Modern under the guidance of Chief Curator Andrea Karnes. The show features mature subjects and nude figures rendered on a monumental scale, making it a bold experience that is not for those faint of heart.
Visitors will have the chance to experience the work of an artist who first rose to prominence in the early 1990s after a show-stopping degree exhibition at the Glasgow School of Art. Since then, Saville has challenged and revitalized the world of figurative painting, pushing the boundaries of what a painting of the human form can do. Her signature style involves layering thick, almost sculptural swaths of paint, producing portraits that feel both visceral and alive. Experiencing her work is a bodily encounter, energetic, raw, and impossible to ignore.
This major retrospective brings together 50 works spanning Saville’s career, tracing her evolution from charcoal sketches to monumental oil paintings. The exhibition does not shy away from questioning traditional notions of female beauty. Saville’s groundbreaking nudes from 1992, which first launched her into the spotlight, sit alongside new portraits rendered in fluorescent, saturated tones, offering a provocative exploration of the tension between the physical and the digital in our image-saturated world.
The exhibition was created in close collaboration with Saville herself and features loans from prestigious public and private collections worldwide. A comprehensive publication accompanies the show, featuring essays by Emanuele Coccia, Dr. Nicholas Cullinan, John Field, Roxane Gay, and Andrea Karnes, as well as a revealing conversation between Saville and Howgate, according to the Modern’s website.
A note for visitors: the exhibition contains mature subjects and nudity, a reminder that art at its most powerful does not always play it safe.
From her early Glasgow beginnings to her status as a contemporary painting powerhouse, Saville continues to challenge how we perceive the human body and ourselves. At the Modern this fall, her work refuses to be ignored.