Maggi Hambling (b. 1945, Sudbury, UK) is a prominent and controversial figure, celebrated as a queer icon, who has been at the forefront of the British art scene for over 50 years.

She studied in the 1960s at Benton End, Suffolk (the legendary art school run by Cedric Morris and Arthur Lett Haines, where Lucian Freud was also a pupil), Ipswich School of Art, Camberwell School of Art, and the Slade.

Over the last decade, Hambling has staged major solo museum exhibitions at Gainsborough's House, Sudbury (2023), CAFA Art Museum, Beijing (2019), The British Museum, London (2016), The National Gallery, London (2014), and The State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg (2013). She has achieved renown and controversy for her various public art commissions, which include A Conversation with Oscar Wilde (1998) at Charing Cross, London, Scallop (2003) on Aldeburgh Beach, Suffolk, and A Sculpture for Mary Wollstonecraft (2020) at Newington Green, London.

Hambling's work is represented in major collections internationally, including in the Metropolitan Museum of Art New York, and CAFA, Beijing and in the UK at the British Museum, Tate, Victoria and Albert Museum, National Portrait Gallery and National Gallery.

Hambling has established a reputation over the last four decades as one of Britain's most significant and controversial artists, a singular contemporary force whose work continues to move, seduce and challenge.