Franz West was born in 1947 in Vienna, Austria, where he still lives and works. His art has been exhibited extensively in Europe and the Americas, including shows at the Dia Center for the Arts (New York), the CAPC Musee d'art contemporain (Bordeaux), the Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles) the Tate Modern (London), and the Museo Tamayo (Mexico City). West began his career in Vienna in the mid-1960s when a local movement called Actionism was in full swing. His earliest sculptures, performances, and collages were a reaction to this movement, in which artists engaged in displays of radical public behaviour and physical endurance meant to shake up art-world passivity. In the early 1970s, West began making a series of small portable sculptures called adaptives.A" He has the ability to make comfortable and colourfully upholstered couches and chairs which transform galleries, museums, and public spaces into lounge-like, sociable environments for viewing art.