Felix Gonzalez-Torres's Biography
Felix Gonzalez-Torres was a Cuban-born American artist best known for his installations and sculptures consisting of everyday objects and materials such as strings of lights and stacks of paper. Through his art, Gonzalez-Torres explored themes of love, loss, identity, and mortality. He was born in 1957 in Miami, Florida, and spent much of his childhood in Puerto Rico. He received a BFA from Pratt Institute in 1983 and an MFA from the International Center of Photography in 1987. Gonzalez-Torres’s work was first exhibited in 1988 and has since been featured in several solo and group exhibitions, including the Whitney Biennial in 1993 and the Venice Biennale in 1995. He has also been honored with numerous awards, including the National Endowment for the Arts grant in 1992 and a MacArthur Foundation “Genius” grant in 1994. Gonzalez-Torres died of AIDS-related complications in 1996 in Miami.