Andres Serrano

Andres Serrano (born 1950, lives and works in New York) is considered one of the most important contemporary artists working today. His work focuses on universal themes such as bodily fluids, religion, sex and death. Serrano is most famous for his seminal 1987 work Piss Christ, an image of a plastic crucifix submerged in urine. The photograph was the subject of a heated congressional debate in which politicians and religious leaders directly threatened Serrano's right to public funding. The scandal resulted in an anti-obscenity clause that prevented “offensive” art works from National Endowment of the Arts support and made Serrano into a champion of artistic freedom. In 2007 Serrano made controversial headlines again when graphic photographs from his “History of Sex” series were vandalized in Sweden by members of a purported neo-Nazi group.
His work is held in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, Modern Art Museum, Fort Worth, Reina Sofia, Madrid and the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, to name a few.