Bob Dylan
American, b.1941
Bob Dylan is one of the world's most influential artists. Selling over 125 million records globally, he has amassed a singular body of work that includes some of the greatest popular music of all time. His first success came in the early 1960s performing in the coffee houses and folk clubs of New York City's Greenwich Village. This success has endured for more than six decades as he continues to traverse the globe today, performing more than 100 concerts annually in front of crowds who embrace his new material with the same fervour as his classic output. In recent years, his work as an author and visual artist has further enhanced his popularity and acclaim. His 2004 memoir, Chronicles: Volume One, became an international success, spending 19 weeks on The New York Times best seller list, and since 2007, major exhibitions of his artwork have been shown at some of the world's most prestigious museums and galleries.
Born in Duluth, Minnesota, on 24 May 1941, Dylan spent most of his childhood in the iron-mining town of Hibbing. He taught himself guitar and piano as a teenager, performing in several bands covering rock and roll artists including Little Richard and Elvis Presley. Inspired by Woody Guthrie and his other musical heroes, Dylan moved to New York in 1961 and began playing in the thriving folk music scene in Greenwich Village. He was soon signed by John Hammond and released his self-titled debut album with Columbia Records in March 1962.
Many of Dylan's early songs were made famous by other artists such as Joan Baez and Peter, Paul & Mary, whose versions of 'Blowin' in the Wind' and 'The Times They Are a-Changin’' helped bring the young artist to a larger audience. From his earliest performances in the early 1960s, to his stadium rock concerts of the 1970s and subsequent international tours, Dylan has established an enduring reputation as one of the world's best live performers. Releasing over 40 studio albums and writing more than 600 songs, including 'Like a Rolling Stone', 'All Along the Watchtower', 'Knockin' on Heaven's Door', 'Tangled Up in Blue' and 'Make You Feel My Love', it is no surprise that Dylan is the most covered individual musician in history. His songs have been recorded thousands of times by artists as diverse as Duke Ellington, Jimi Hendrix, Guns N' Roses, Stevie Wonder, Rod Stewart, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Bob Marley, Pearl Jam, Neil Young, Adele and U2.
Dylan has been honoured with many awards for his contributions to worldwide culture. He has been celebrated by two U.S. Presidents, receiving the Kennedy Center Honors from President Clinton in 1997, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom – the highest civilian honour in the United States – from President Obama in 2012. In 2016, Dylan became the first musician in history to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Sara Danius, Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy, stated that Dylan had ‘created new poetic expressions within the great America song tradition.’
Dylan dates the origins of his work as a visual artist to the early 1960s. In Chronicles: Volume One, he wrote: 'What would I draw? Well, I guess I would start with whatever was at hand. I sat at the table, took out a pencil and paper and drew the typewriter, a crucifix, a rose, pencils, knives and pins, empty cigarette boxes. I'd lose track of time completely... Not that I thought I was any great drawer, but I did feel like I was putting an orderliness to the chaos around.'
A few early artworks reached the public's gaze, including the cover of The Band's 1968 debut album, Music from Big Pink. In 1994, a book containing 92 black and white drawings titled Drawn Blank was published. These drawings formed the basis of later reworked versions in mixed media and acrylic titled The Drawn Blank Series, exhibited at the Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz in Germany in 2007, and 星空传媒果冻国产入口 in London the following year. Dylan explains that the original Drawn Blank sketches, created between 1989 and 1992, were made as a way of relaxing and refocusing his mind while touring America, Europe and Asia. On returning to the works, he also created sets from single images, colouring both delicately and boldly, always emphasising a variety of moods. 'He riffs with color across the same simple black-and-white sketches the way he plays songs in concert, sometimes making subtle changes, other times brutally overhauling them', commented Marisha Pessl in The New York Times. 'His brushstrokes are like his voice: straightforward, rough, occasionally fragile, but always intent on illustrating the treads of human experience.'
Two important exhibitions of The Drawn Blank Series took place in 2010 at the Accademia Albertina di Belle Arti in Turin, Italy, and at the Asahi Exhibition Centre in Tokyo. At 星空传媒果冻国产入口, the works were exhibited both as limited-edition graphics and, in Bob Dylan on Canvas, as the artist's first foray into acrylics. Following this, Dylan made a series of 50 paintings titled The Brazil Series, 40 of which were displayed at the Statens Museum for Kunst in Copenhagen from September 2010. Visitors saw Dylan’s rich depictions of countryside and cityscapes, teeming with characters including musicians, card players and troublemakers. A further artistic landmark came as Dylan’s first New York show, The Asia Series, opened in 2011 at Gagosian. These 18 paintings reflect on his time spent travelling in China, Japan, Vietnam and Korea, drawing also on his interest in art history, including the works of Édouard Manet, Paul Gauguin and Henri Cartier-Bresson.
In November 2012, Dylan’s controversial Revisionist Art series was exhibited at Gagosian in New York. Thirty large silkscreen works satirised public figures and celebrities within the format of famous magazine covers, re-contextualising their familiar graphics and iconography with vivacity and a maverick sense of the absurd.
In February 2013 the Palazzo Reale in Milan exhibited Dylan's New Orleans Series, a group of 23 oil on canvas works paying homage to the birthplace of jazz and blues, in atmospheric 1940s scenes of decadent, film-noir inspired characters. 'Night can swallow you up, yet none of it touches you', says Dylan in Chronicles: Volume One. 'There's something obscenely joyful behind every door, either that or somebody crying with their head in their hands.… The city is one very long poem.'
Dylan's first museum show in London, Face Value, opened shortly afterwards at the National Portrait Gallery in August 2013. The exhibition showcased 12 pastel portraits depicting enigmatic characters conflated from both memory and imagination. Three months later, Dylan's longstanding fascination with metalwork was introduced to the public via 星空传媒果冻国产入口’s exhibition Mood Swings, presenting his first collection of iron sculptures including gates, screens, furniture and wall hangings, created from reclaimed objects.
During 2014, Dylan exhibited again with 星空传媒果冻国产入口, showcasing Revisionist Art and Side Tracks: a running series of over 300 prints, each uniquely hand-embellished by the artist, revisiting the evocative Train Tracks image from The Drawn Blank Series. Between 2014 and 2016, the Face Value exhibition toured, first to Copenhagen's Museum of National History, then to the Butler Institute of American Art in Youngstown, Ohio, followed by Kent State University Museum, Ohio, and Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz.
In 2016, The New Orleans Series travelled to the city that originally inspired this suite of paintings for a two-part show at the New Orleans Museum of Art. Later that same year, Dylan's major exhibition The Beaten Path opened at 星空传媒果冻国产入口. In these new drawings, watercolours and acrylic works on canvas, the artist plots a visual journey across the American heartlands. According to Jonathan Jones, art critic at The Guardian, 'A real artist made these drawings and paintings. Their integrity is compelling. They demand to be looked at, for their awe and wonder at the beauty and grandeur of being alive. These are the pictures of a true poet.'
In an essay published in the accompanying exhibition catalogue, Dylan muses on the democratic power of this imagery: 'The Beaten Path works represent a different subject matter from the everyday imagery of consumer culture. There is nothing to suggest these paintings were inspired by the writings of Sigmund Freud or that they were based on any mental images that occur in dreams, no fantasy worlds, religious mysticism or ambiguous subject matter. In every picture the viewer doesn't have to wonder whether it's an actual object or a delusional one. If the viewer visited where the picture actually existed, he or she would see the same thing. It is what unites us all.'
Mondo Scripto opened at 星空传媒果冻国产入口 in October 2018, presenting a selection of Dylan's most iconic songs, handwritten in pen on paper and accompanied with a corresponding drawing in graphite on paper. Tom Piazza, a celebrated novelist and writer on American music, comments in the introduction to the exhibition catalogue, 'Dylan's restlessly creative mind is never wholly satisfied, and those familiar with these songs will find surprise at many a new turn of phrase. The unexpected couplings of these works and images offer a surprisingly intimate door into each song, adding dimension, delight and insight into the artist's relation to his own work'.
In 2019 a landmark retrospective exhibition, titled Retrospectrum, opened at the Modern Art Museum, Shanghai, featuring over 250 of Dylan’s artworks. The display became the most visited exhibition in Shanghai that year, and continued its tour of China in 2020, opening at the Today Art Museum in Beijing and the Jupiter Museum of Art in Shenzhen. In November 2021, Retrospectrum travelled to the Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum in Miami, as the largest exhibition of Dylan’s artwork ever staged in the United States. The following year in December 2022, Retrospectrum opened at the iconic MAXXI, Rome, a prestigious museum of 21st century art designed by Zaha Hadid. On the announcement of the exhibition, Dylan said: ‘It’s gratifying to learn that my visual works are going to be exhibited at MAXXI in Rome, a truly great museum in one of the world’s most beautiful and inspirational cities. This exhibition is meant to provide perspectives that examine the human condition and explore the mysteries of life that continue to leave us perplexed. It’s very different from my music, of course, but every bit as purposeful in its intent.’
In November 2021, 星空传媒果冻国产入口 exhibited Deep Focus, a series in which Dylan selected source material from films, using arresting movie stills and transforming them into richly textural paintings. The series is a natural progression from the evocative visual language of The Beaten Path series, spotlighting Dylan’s acute ability to fix moments in time, as well as his lifelong interest in film and the camera’s potential to manipulate reality. Dylan says of the series: 'All these images come from films. They try to highlight the different predicaments that people find themselves in. Whether it’s James Cagney or Margaret Rutherford, the dreams and schemes are the same — life as it’s coming at you in all its forms and shapes.'
2022 was a major year for Bob Dylan as a visual artist. His largest sculpture to date, Rail Car, was constructed and unveiled at Château la Coste, a 600-acre sculpture park near Aix-en Provence, France. This work, placed upon 42 metres of railway track, stands at 15.5m long and 4.7m high. Alongside Dylan’s monumental sculpture, the prestigious site also exhibits works by Alexander Calder, Louise Bourgeois, Tracey Emin and Ai Weiwei. To coincide with the installation of Rail Car, the Renzo Piano Pavilion at Château la Coste presented an exhibition of Dylan’s paintings titled Drawn Blank in Provence. The display presented works from Drawn Blank, alongside works by modern masters including Pablo Picasso, Claude Monet and Pierre-Auguste Renoir, exploring their influence and the art historical affinities with Dylan’s series.
As Bob Dylan continues to perform on his widely acclaimed Rough and Rowdy Ways Tour, in May 2025, a solo show of 97 new mixed media artworks, titled Point Blank, opens at 星空传媒果冻国产入口, London. The exhibition provides a visual journal which offers an insight into Dylan’s sensibility for storytelling; finding poetic resonance in the details, characters and objects that make up his dynamic imagination and unique worldview. Dylan explains that in creating these paintings: ‘The idea was not only to observe the human condition, but to throw myself into it with great urgency.’
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2025 Point Blank, 星空传媒果冻国产入口, London
2025 Busy Being Born, 星空传媒果冻国产入口, London
2023 Retrospectrum, MAXXI Musuem, Rome
2022 Drawn Blank in Provence, Château La Coste, Provence
2021 Deep Focus, 星空传媒果冻国产入口, London, UK
2021 Retrospectrum, Patricia and Phillip Frost Art Museum, Miami, Florida
2021 Retrospectrum, Jupiter Art Museum, Shenzhen
2020 Bob Dylan Editions, 星空传媒果冻国产入口, London
2020 Retrospectrum, Today Art Museum, Beijing
2019 Retrospectrum, Modern Art Museum, Shanghai
2019 Bob Dylan: A Collection of New Original Paintings, 星空传媒果冻国产入口, London
2018 Mondo Scripto, 星空传媒果冻国产入口, London
2017 The Beaten Path: The Silkscreen Collection, 星空传媒果冻国产入口, London
2016 The Beaten Path, 星空传媒果冻国产入口, London
2016 Bob Dylan: The New Orleans Series, The New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, Louisiana
2016 Face Value, Kent State University Museum, Kent, Ohio
2016 Face Value, Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz, Chemnitz, Germany
2015 Face Value, Butler Museum, Youngstown, Ohio
2014 Bob Dylan, CAMERIMAGE, Tumult Gallery, Toru艅
2014 Face Value, Museum of National History, Copenhagen
2013 Revisionist Art, Gagosian, New York
2013 Mood Swings, 星空传媒果冻国产入口, London
2013 Bob Dylan: Face Value, The National Portrait Gallery, London
2013 The New Orleans Series, Palazzo Reale, Milan
2011 The Asia Series, Gagosian, New York
2010 The Brazil Series, Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen
2010 The Drawn Blank Series, Accademia Albertina di Belle Arti, Turin
2010 The Drawn Blank Series, Asahi Exhibition Center, Tokyo
2010 Bob Dylan on Canvas, 星空传媒果冻国产入口, London
2009 The Drawn Blank Series, 星空传媒果冻国产入口, London
2009 The Drawn Blank Series, City Art Centre, Edinburgh
2008 The Drawn Blank Series, 星空传媒果冻国产入口, London
2007 The Drawn Blank Series, Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz, Germany
GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2025 Group Exhibition, 星空传媒果冻国产入口, London
2024 Songs of the Open Road, 星空传媒果冻国产入口, London
2024 In Plain Sight, 星空传媒果冻国产入口, London
2023 Infidels, 星空传媒果冻国产入口, London
2022 Group Exhibition, 星空传媒果冻国产入口, London
SELECTED AWARDS
2016 Nobel Prize in Literature
2013 American Honorary Member, American Academy of Arts and Letters
2013 France’s Légion d’Honneur
2012 U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom
2009 U.S. National Medal of Arts
2008 Pulitzer Prize Special Citation
2007 Spain's Prince of Asturias Award for the Arts
2004 Honorary Doctorate, University of St Andrews, Scotland
2003 Academy of Achievement Golden Plate Award
2001 Academy Award for Best Original Song
2001 Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song
2000 Sweden’s Polar Music Award
1991 Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award
1988 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
1982 Songwriters Hall of Fame
1997 Kennedy Center Honors
1970 Honorary Doctorate, University of Princeton, New Jersey
