Barbara Kruger is an American

People of the United States

The people of the United States, also known as simply Americans or American people, are the inhabitants or citizens of the United States. The United States is a multi-ethnic nation, home to people of different ethnic and national backgrounds...

 conceptual art

Conceptual art

Conceptual art is art in which the concept or idea involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic and material concerns. Many of the works, sometimes called installations, of the artist Sol LeWitt may be constructed by anyone simply by following a set of written instructions...

ist. Much of her work consists of black-and-white photographs overlaid with declarative captions—in white-on-red Futura Bold Oblique

Futura (typeface)

In typography, Futura is a geometric sans-serif typeface designed in 1927 by Paul Renner. It is based on geometric shapes that became representative visual elements of the Bauhaus design style of 1919–1933...

 or Helvetica Ultra Condensed

Helvetica

Helvetica is a widely used sans-serif typeface developed in 1957 by Swiss typeface designer Max Miedinger with Eduard Hoffmann.-Visual distinctive characteristics:Characteristics of this typeface are:lower case:square dot over the letter i....

. The phrases in her works often include use of pronouns such as "you", "your", "I", "we", and "they".
Kruger was born in Newark, New Jersey. After attending Syracuse University

Syracuse University

Syracuse University is a private research university located in Syracuse, New York, United States. Its roots can be traced back to Genesee Wesleyan Seminary, founded by the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1832, which also later founded Genesee College...

 and studying art and design with Diane Arbus

Diane Arbus

Diane Arbus March 14, 1923 – July 26, 1971) was an American photographer and writer noted for black-and-white square photographs of "deviant and marginal people or of people whose normality seems ugly or surreal." A friend said that Arbus said that she was "afraid.....

 and Marvin Israel

Marvin Israel

Marvin Israel , was born in Syracuse, New York, the son of Bessie and Harry Israel. He was an American artist, photographer, painter, teacher and art director from New York known for modern/surreal interiors, abstract imagery. Created sinister shadowy and exuberant interiors with implications of...

 at Parsons School of Design in New York, Kruger obtained a design job at Condé Nast Publications

Condé Nast Publications

Condé Nast, a division of Advance Publications, is a magazine publisher. In the U.S., it produces 18 consumer magazines, including Architectural Digest, Bon Appétit, GQ, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, and Vogue, as well as four business-to-business publications, 27 websites, and more than 50 apps...

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