Alexander Rutsch Award – Call For Artists
Pelham Art Center is pleased to announce a call for entries for the 10th biennial Alexander Rutsch Award and Exhibition for Painting. This juried competition is open to U.S.-based artists aged 19 and older. All work submitted must be available for exhibition and be categorized as paintings.
Click here for the application / registration
Deadline: 25 Jan 2019
Pelham Art Center is proud to sponsor this competition and award honoring the memory and artistic achievement of artist Alexander Rutsch (1916 – 1997). Rutsch actively supported Pelham Art Center for more than 25 years. After his death, friends, family, and supporters established a generous fund to support a biennial, open, juried competition in painting.
Rutsch’s work, as seen through his mastery of various art forms – sculpture, painting, print-making, and drawing – has been described as “vibrating showers of lines, bold geometries, wounded anatomically rambling scrap-wood skeletons, enigmatic totem figures, and congregations of fetishized, domesticated, and recycled rubbish heaps [that] conspire to a fantasy of Expressionism, Cubism, Dada, Fauvism, Cobra, and Primitivism.”
Rutsch’s pieces, as described by Emily Genauer, impart silence and the monumentality of primitive statuary. His sculptures are stylized to abstract construction made of “found” objects, welded and reshaped into bronze figures and animals of uncommon wit, airy grace, and individuality. His portraits are crisp, intense, spare linear characterizations that convey empathy. Pelham Art Center is proud to sponsor a competition and award to honor the memory and artistic achievement of Alexander Rutsch.
The Alexander Rutsch Award and Exhibition program continues Rutsch’s belief that art transcends all of our humanity. Rutsch saw art as “the stone in the water sending ripples throughout the universe.” His extraordinary work, rich in the celebration of life and our shared human experiences, is included in many of public and private collections throughout the U.S. and Europe.
Alexander Rutsch Award Previous Winners
- 2017: Sammy Chong
- 2015: Lindy Chambers
- 2013: Siobhan McBride
- 2011: Nina Rizzo
- 2009: Tracy Miller
- 2007: Liang Guo
- 2005: Dorothy Robinson
- 2003: Mitchell Marco
- 2001: Frank Trankina
The winner receives a solo exhibition on May 3 – June 22, 2019 and $5,000 cash award. On May 3rd, there will be a well publicized exhibition opening at Pelham Art Center. Over 1500 postcards are mailed out. The audience at the exhibition openings is generally over 100 people from Westchester and NYC.
About Pelham Art Center
Pelham Art Center (PAC) is a non-profit educational and cultural institution committed to providing public access to see, study, and experience the arts; foster lifelong arts appreciation; and strengthen the community. The Art Center was founded in 1970 and serves more than 16,000 people each year.
Pelham Art Center aims to provide art access to everyone. Along with the public programming PAC offers an affordable membership program to individuals, seniors, art educators, and families. Memberships provide further discounts on classes, workshops, and the Artisan Craft Marketplace. Higher levels of membership include invitations to exclusive art access with behind the scenes VIP art experiences. These experiences include a private artist studio tour, curator lead museum tour, viewing a private collection/artist home, and special access to an Art Fair during Armory Week. All events are lead with Executive Director, Charlotte Mouquin.
For more information, contact anki@pelhamartcenter.org.
