Emilio Sanchez Award for Visual Arts

The Cintas Foundation is pleased to announce the first Endowed Award: The Cintas Foundation Emilio Sanchez Award for Visual Arts.

Established in 2005, the award is funded by the Emilio Sanchez Foundation for the benefit of the winner of the Cintas Fellowship in Visual Arts. Emilio Sanchez was a beloved Cuban American artist whose works are in the permanent collection of major institutions such as Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Hirshorn Museum and Sculpture Garden and the Museo de Arte Moderno of Bogota. Sanchez, a graduate of Yale University, won a Cintas Fellowship in 1989. The Emilio Sanchez Foundation was created after the artist’s death in 1999.

The first award was granted at the opening of the 2005 Cintas Fellows Finalists Exhibition at the Americas Society in New York, in June, 2005. The first recipient of the award was Christian Curiel. Born in 1977 in Puerto Rico, he the received a bachelor of fine arts at the International Fine Arts College in Miami and a master of fine arts in painting from Yale University. Curiel lives and works in New York City.

Next to receive the Award was the Cuban born Glexis Novoa, in 2006. Novoa is known for his use of fantastic realism by combining real and imagined landscapes in his graphite renderings. Novoa studied at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine, and the National School of Art and the National School of Design in Havana. He lives and works in Miami.

Gean Moreno received the Award in 2007. In addition to his career as an artist, Moreno is a contemporary art critic and a respected curator with a focus on emerging artists. He is a graduate of Florida International University with a bachelor of arts in philosophy. Moreno lives and works in Miami.

Endowment Awards may also be granted in the fields of: architecture, film, literature, music composition, photography, sculpture and Lifetime Achievement.

The Cintas Foundation welcomes inquiries.