Av. Dr. José N. Gándara, San Juan, 00931, Puerto Rico
University of Puerto Rico
200 Willoughby Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11205, United States
Pratt Institute
1114 6th Ave, New York, NY 10036, United States
International Center of Photography
Av. Dr. José N. Gándara, San Juan, 00931, Puerto Rico
University of Puerto Rico
200 Willoughby Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11205, United States
Pratt Institute
1114 6th Ave, New York, NY 10036, United States
International Center of Photography
Félix González-Torres
Felix Gonzalez-Torres was born on November 26, 1957, in Guaimaro, Cuba. He was the third child of four having one brother named Mario Gonzalez and two sisters – Maida Fernandez and Gloria Gonzalez.
The year of his birth the little baby was sent along with his sister Gloria to an orphanage in Madrid, Spain. Later the same year their uncle brought them to Puerto Rico where Felix spent a part of his childhood.
Felix Gonzalez-Torres graduated from the Colegio San Jorge in San Juan, Puerto Rico in 1976. Then, he became a student at the University of Puerto Rico. While at the institution, Gonzalez-Torres took an active part in the artistic life of the city.
In 1979, he received a fellowship which allowed him to develop his artistic skills in the Pratt Institute of New York City. The following year the young artist participated for the first time at the Whitney Independent Study Program in which he took part again the year of his graduation in 1983. He obtained the Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in photography.
Then, Gonzalez-Torres went to Europe and pursued his artistic training in Venice.
In 1987, Felix Gonzalez-Torres gained his Master of Fine Arts degree from the International Center of Photography.
Felix Gonzalez-Torres started his career in 1987 from the adjunct art instructor’s post at the New York University where he had taught for a couple of years.
Gonzalez-Torres received the popularity in the late 1980s with his famous datelines with text and dates which later transformed into so-called word-portraits. By 1988, he already had two solo shows which were followed this year by the third one in the gallery of New York City. The next year, the artist produced the series of billboards as the opposition to public art monuments. Among the examples of such artworks is a billboard placed in Sheridan Square, New York City and made to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion initiated by the LGBTQ community.
The beginning of Gonzalez-Torres’s artistic journey was also related with the participation at the group of the artists called Group Material which he joined in 1987. In a couple of years, the group was invited to take part in the exhibition dedicated to the AIDS issues at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive.
Gonzalez-Torres’s art of the early 1990s was influenced by the death of his partner Ross Laycock to whom he dedicated almost all of his creations, including the light-strings installations, the billboard ‘Untitled’ (a monochrome photo of an empty bed) or the curtains of gilded beads. The latter was a symbol of scientists’ researches of the cure for HIV/AIDS.
Since that time, Gonzalez-Torres’s art was represented by the Andrea Rosen Gallery in New York City. In 1990, Felix Gonzalez-Torres had his next solo exhibition, this time at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. He also occupied the post of the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia.
At the end of the artist’s life, his collection of the personal exhibitions was enriched by several shows in well-known art galleries including the retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, the Hirschhorn Museum in Washington, D.C. and at the Renaissance Society in Chicago, all featured in 1994. A year before his death, Felix Gonzalez-Torres presented his pieces of art at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.
Felix Gonzalez-Torres was an accomplished artist whose artistic approach was widely recognized while alive and after his death.
Despite his short career, the artist received several fellowships including the fellowship from the National Endowment for the Art and from the German Academic Exchange Service. He was a recipient of the Gordon Matta-Clark Foundation Award.
Gonzalez-Torres made a contribution to the development of Minimalism and Conceptualism by managing to bring his personal life experience and politics into these styles.
In May 2002, the Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation has been established which main goals are to preserve the heritage of the artist and to promote it among the art admirers, students and critics.
Gonzalez-Torres's artwork titled "Untitled" (Portrait of Marcel Brient) brought the personal auction sale record of the artist at the Phillips de Pury & Company in 2010. It was purchased by $4.6 million.
The artworks by Felix Gonzalez-Torres did not lose popularity after his death. In 2007, the artist was posthumously selected a representative of the United States at the Venice Biennale. Nowadays, his pieces of art are the subjects of multiple international retrospectives dedicated to him. Such shows include the City of Paris' Museum of Modern Art (Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris), the Sprengel Museum in Hannover, Germany (1997), the Serpentine Gallery in London (2000), the National Portrait Gallery at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC and the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, the Museum für Moderne Kunst Frankfurt, the ArtPace gallery in San Antonio and others.
In 2010-2011, the retrospective of the artist titled ‘Felix Gonzalez-Torres. Specific Objects without Specific Form’ travelled to the WIELS Contemporary Art Centre in Brussels, Belgium, to the Beyeler Foundation in Riehen, Switzerland and to the Museum of Modern Art in Frankfurt, Germany.
"Untitled" (North)
"Untitled" (America #1)
"Untitled" (Public Opinion)
"Untitled" (Beginning)
"Untitled" (Last Light)
"Untitled" (Warm Water)
"Untitled"
"Untitled" (March 5th) #2
“Untitled” (Portrait of Ross in Los Angeles)
"Untitled" (Water)
“Untitled”
"Untitled" (Perfect Lovers)
"Untitled"
Untitled (Death by Gun)
"Untitled" (Placebo)
"Untitled" (Double Portrait)
“Untitled” (Golden)
"Untitled" (A Corner of Baci)
Untitled (March 5th) #2
Double Fear
Untitled (Portrait of Dad)
Untitled
Untitled
Untitled (Blood)
Untitled (Sand)
Untitled (Blue Mirror)
Quotations:
"Without the public these works are nothing...I ask the public to help me, to take responsibility, to become part of my work, to join in."
"Above all else, it is about leaving a mark that I existed: I was here. I was hungry. I was defeated. I was happy. I was sad. I was in love. I was afraid. I was hopeful. I had an idea and I had a good purpose and that's why I made works of art."
"When you get out of the theater you should not have had a catharsis, you should have had a thinking experience. More than anything, break the pleasure of representation, the pleasure of the flawless narrative. This is not life, this is just a theater piece. I like that a lot: This is not life, this is just an artwork. I want you, the viewer, to be intellectually challenged, moved, and informed."
Felix Gonzalez-Torres was of an untraditional sexual orientation.
This fact, as well as his AIDS experience, are often considered as the things that influenced his art.
Felix Gonzalez-Torres had two partners during his life.
In 1983 the artist met Ross Laycock who became his partner for eight years. Laycock died in 1991 of AIDS-related complications. That had a great impact on the Gonzalez-Torres’s art because according to the artist himself all his artworks were about Ross.
Gonzalez-Torres’s second partner was named Rafael Vasquez.
