Called the Grandmother of performance art, Marina Abramovic (November 30, 1946) is one of the most important contemporary artists in the world. Her work, which starts from physical and mental experimentation, has been exhibited in the most important museums and galleries in Europe and North America. Of Serbian origin and with an irreverent personality, the biography and net worth of Marina Abramovic will show us the profile of a woman who turns her life into an extraordinary work of art. Let us begin!
Biography of Marina Abramovic
Marina Abramovic was born on November 30, 1946 in the city of Belgrade, Serbia. Her childhood was spent on the foundations of the former Yugoslavia. Her father was a dedicated military man, considered a national hero, and her mother, an elegant Serbian, was a woman dedicated to art in her hometown.
Due to her mother’s work, Marina Abramovic developed an early interest in art. At the age of six, she was already painting and was an avid pianist. Marina’s parents wanted her to have a broad intellect, so before reaching adolescence Abramovic was already fluent in French and English and was a voracious reader.
In 1964 Abramovic enrolled in the Belgrade Academy of Fine Arts, where he learned about the technicality of art and its universal history. Also, further enriching her knowledge, he studied postgraduate studies at universities in Croatia and Serbia. It was during her years as a student that Marina Abramovic fell in love with performance and made it her definitive artistic field.
Marina Abramovic net worth
Since 2010 Marina Abramovic has directed the Marina Abramovic Institute, a non-profit institution that supports, explores and makes performance art possible in the world, through workshops and artistic projects. The Federal Republic of Yugoslavia disintegrated since 2003. The countries that made it up were: Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia and Montenegro. Her approx. net worth is 10 million dollars.
The rhythmic performance of Marina Abramovic
In her years at the university, Marina Abramovic felt that painting and traditional art were not enough to express her ideas and needs as an artist. From a very young age, as a result of the toxic relationship she had with her mother, Marina was interested in exploring her body; take herself towards unknown sensations and limits. This is how her interest in artistic action arose.
Thus, in 1973, Marina presented, during her stay in the city of Amsterdam, the performance entitled Ritmo 10. In this work, Abramovic experimented for the first time with her body, applying the well-known “Russian roulette” with knives to her hands. Through this project, Abramovic installed in her style the use of the body as the definitive channel for expression and consciousness.
The reception of the public before this performance was positive, so that just a year later, in 1974, Marina Abramovic presented three more installations: Ritmo 5, Ritmo 2 and Ritmo 0. With Ritmo 5, Marina exposed her body to extreme limits, making use of fire and heat. On the other hand, in Rhythm 2, the Serb used drugs and antidepressant medicines before a large audience, to demonstrate the ineffable mind-body connection.
However, the performance that would explode her race through the skies would be Rhythm 0, considered one of the artist’s classic works and where Marina made clear her favorite object of study: the public. With Ritmo 0, Marina Abramovic filled an entire room with different objects that the public put on her naked body. Knives, whips, a gun and thorned roses. Everything to be used on the body of the artist and challenge her limits, both personal and artistic.
A life dedicated to art
In the sixties and part of the seventies, the name of Marina Abramovic decorated the most important art salons in the world. Together with the German artist Ulay – who was her partner for more than 12 years. Abramovic presented the works The other, Relationship in space, Relationship in motion and Death itself. All with an unusual challenge of the physical and mental capacities of the human being.
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In the following years of her career, Marina Abramovic dedicated herself to presenting her artistic experiments in various museums of contemporary art around the world, such as the British National Museum of Modern Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, where she was creative director. On the other hand, in 2010 she presented The Artist is Present, a documentary that followed one of the most strenuous performative installations of her career, which lasted a total of 716 hours.
