Felix Gonzalez-Torres

Felix Gonzalez-Torres (1957–1996) was one of the most significant artists to emerge in the late 1980s and early 1990s. In its reduced formal vocabulary, conceptual rigor, and evocative use of everyday materials, the artist's work resonates with meaning that is at once specific and mutable, rigorous and generous, poetic and political.

Gonzalez-Torres was an American artist born in Guáimaro, Cuba. He lived and worked in New York City between 1979 and 1995. Gonzalez-Torres died in Miami on January 9, 1996 from AIDS-related causes. He began his art studies at the University of Puerto Rico before moving to New York City, where he attended the Whitney Independent Study Program, first in 1981 and again in 1983. He received his BFA from Pratt Institute, New York, in 1983 and his MFA from the International Center of Photography and New York University in 1987.

From 1987 to 1991, Gonzalez-Torres was a part of the artist collective Group Material, whose collaborative, politically-informed practice focused on community engagement and activist interventions. In 1988, he had his first one-man exhibitions, at the Rastovski Gallery, New York, INTAR Gallery, New York, and the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York. His earliest billboard work, "Untitled" (1989), was installed at New York's Sheridan Square on the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion. In 1990, a solo presentation of Gonzalez-Torres's work served as the inaugural exhibition of the Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York.

Notable shows during his lifetime include Felix Gonzalez-Torres: Traveling, a survey that was presented at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC, and the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago in 1994. In 1995, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, organized an international traveling retrospective of his work, which was subsequently presented at Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea, Santiago de Compostela, Spain (1995-1996) and Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (1996).

In 1997, the Sprengel Museum Hannover, Germany, organized a traveling posthumous exhibition and published a catalogue raisonné of the artist's work. The exhibition traveled to Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, Switzerland (1997) and Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, Vienna (1998). In the subsequent decade, further solo exhibitions of the artist's work were presented at institutions worldwide. Gonzalez-Torres was selected to represent the United States at the 52nd Venice Biennale in 2007.

In 2010-2011, WIELS Contemporary Art Center, Brussels, organized a six-part traveling retrospective, Felix Gonzalez-Torres: Specific Objects without Specific Form, which was also presented at the Fondation Beyeler, Basel, and Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt. At each institution, Elena Filipovic curated a retrospective version of the exhibition which was reconsidered midway through its run by a collaborating artist-curator: Danh Vo, Carol Bove, and Tino Sehgal, respectively. Other exhibitions include those held at PLATEAU and Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul, South Korea (2012); Metropolitan Arts Centre, Belfast, Northern Ireland (2015); and Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai, China (2016).

Felix Gonzalez-Torres: Summer was on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Toronto in 2022. Also in 2022, The two-person presentation, Felix Gonzalez-Torres – Roni Horn, was presented at the Bourse de Commerce–Pinault Collection, Paris. The first major solo presentation of the artist’s work in Washington, DC, in over 30 years, Felix Gonzalez-Torres: Always to Return, was held at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery and Archives of American Art, Washington, DC, in 2024-2025. In May 2026, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, will open the solo exhibition Felix Gonzalez-Torres: Sweet Revenge.

In 2017, David Zwirner announced that the gallery would be joining Andrea Rosen Gallery in co-representing the estate of Gonzalez-Torres. The announcement was accompanied by a solo exhibition of the artist’s work at David Zwirner New York. The gallery also presented a solo exhibition of work by Gonzalez-Torres in New York in 2023.

Work by the artist is held in significant institutional collections worldwide, among them the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; Art Institute of Chicago; Astrup Fearnley Museet for Moderne Kunst, Oslo; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas; Brooklyn Museum, New York; Fondation Beyeler, Basel; Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; La Collección Jumex, Mexico City; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Pérez Art Museum Miami; Pinault Collection, Paris; Philadelphia Art Museum; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Sprengel Museum Hannover, Hanover; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Tate, United Kingdom; Vancouver Art Gallery; and the Whitney Museum of American Art.