Katharina Fritsch was born into an architect’s family and studied art history at the University of Münster before transferring to the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in 1977, where she studied in the studio of Fritz Schwegler. She represented Germany at the forty-sixth Venice Biennale (1995). She had held solo exhibitions at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, MO, USA (2014); the Art Institute of Chicago, IL, USA (2012); Kunsthaus Zürich, Switzerland, and Deichtorhallen Hamburg, Germany (2009); Palazzina dei Giardini, Galeria dell Civica, Modena, Italy (2007); White Cube, London (1999, 2006); Tate Modern, London, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (2001); and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (1996), among others. Most recently, the Mayor of London’s Fourth Plinth Commissioning Group invited Fritsch to create the sculpture Cock for Trafalgar Square (2013). She was professor at the Kunstakademie Münster, Germany (2001–2010) and is now a professor at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf.