The Penagos Prize, given by the MAPFRE Foundation in career-spanning recognition to a living artist whose oeuvre has paid special attention to drawing, will be given this year to Venezuelan artist Carlos Cruz-Díez.
Cruz-Díez, who lives and works in Paris since 1960, began his exploration of kinetic art in the 1950s, and the development of his artistic reflection has transformed notions about the perception of color in art. Cruz-Díez's work is based on color conceived as an autonomous reality, devoid of anecdote, that evolves over time and space without help from shapes and without need for support.
On this occasion, the prize jury was comprised of Alberto Manzano Martos, president of the MAPFRE Foundation; Pablo Jiménez Burillo, general Director of the Foundation's Institute of Culture; Francisco Calvo Serraller, Art History professor and critic; Eugenio Carmona Matos, Art History professor; Juan Fernández-Layos Rubio, member of the MAPFRE Foundation Institute of Culture's Advisory Council; artist Julián Grau Santos; gallerist Leandro Navarro Ungría; Estrella de Diego, Art History professor; and María Dolores Jiménez Blanco, Art History professor.
The MAPFRE Foundation created the Penagos Drawing Prize in 1982 in memory of Madrid-born artist Rafael de Penagos, a representative of the renewal movement in Spanish graphic illustration in the 1920s and 30s.