Rebecca Salter PRA, President of the Royal Academy of Arts, is a painter and printmaker whose quietly meditative works are rooted in traditional Japanese woodblock printing.
Artist profile
Rebecca Salter PRA is the current President of the Royal Academy of Arts. She studied at Bristol Polytechnic and then at Kyoto City University of the Arts in Japan, where she lived for six years. While living in Kyoto she studied traditional Japanese woodblock printing with Professor Kurosaki Akira and has since written two books on the subject. Her interest in printmaking is combined with her practice in painting. She is Associate Lecturer on the MA Printmaking Course at Camberwell College of Art, University of the Arts, London.
Salter exhibits regularly in London and internationally and in 2011 had a major retrospective into the light of things at Yale Center for British Art, Connecticut. A monograph was published to coincide with the show. An accompanying exhibition at Yale University Art Gallery explored links between Western artists and Japan. She has also been artist in residence twice (2003 and 2011) at the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, Connecticut.
Salter was elected as a Royal Academician in December 2014 and in June 2017, she became the Keeper of the RA Schools. On 10th December 2019 she was elected the 27th President of the Royal Academy of Arts and became the first female President since the Academy was founded in 1768.