Art by Jenny Saville

Saville paints the human body at a scale and a level of unflinching physical detail that most painting simply avoids, close-up folds of flesh, scars, bruising, rendered with the same weight and seriousness traditionally reserved for classical nudes. Associated loosely with the Young British Artists generation, she built her reputation on work that pushed back hard against conventional, idealized depictions of the female body. In 2018, her painting Propped sold at Sotheby's for $12.4 million, at the time setting the record for the most expensive work by a living female artist ever sold at auction.