Fernando Colón awarded The Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Grant 2022

Fernando Colón-González, “Untitled”, Oil on primed board , 18 x 24 inches  

The Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation has been awarding grants to mature, creative visual artists since 1976. These awards are intended to recognize the talents of many individuals around the world who have dedicated long careers to making art and hopes to alleviate some of the financial burden on those artists so they can devote more of their time and energies to their creative endeavors.

Each one of the 20 artists whose names and work appear below was awarded a cash grant of $25,000 this year. These individuals were selected from a group of 705 applications by a panel of five advisors who are themselves art professionals and who have no affiliation with the Gottlieb Foundation.

Awardees include a Puerto Rican artist Fernando Colón-González was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico in 1966. He developed an interest in abstract art during his early years in art school and it has been the aesthetic he continues to develop since then. Fernando’s work has been exhibited in several venues in New York, across the United States, and abroad, including The Drawing Center, Howard Scott Gallery, Philippe Briet Gallery in New York, and Galería Jakob Karpio in San José, Costa Rica.

“The majority of my works are executed with one uninterrupted line or brush stroke. They exist between complexity and grace. Someone compared them with the routine of a gymnast or a figure skater. Their exercise requires planning, a huge concentration, power, and grace.

I believe the ART element within an artwork is like the soul in a human being, no one knows where it is. It is, or it is not.”