PROVINCETOWN, MASS.- The Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts announces details for its 5th Annual Summer Awards Celebration scheduled for Saturday, July 12. This year’s festivities honor the late renowned artist Robert De Niro, Sr., actor/arts philanthropist Robert De Niro, Jr. and the award-winning author Ann Patchett. The 5th Annual Summer Awards Celebration on July 12th is a benefit for the Fine Arts Work Center and will be hosted on campus at 24 Pearl Street, Provincetown, MA. The event is from 6:30 pm to 8:00 pm and includes cocktails and hors d’oeuvres and the legendary honoree awards presentation. A dinner buffet follows. Robert De Niro, Jr. and Ann Patchett will be in attendance to accept the awards and participate in the festivities. Special guest also includes artist Paul Resika, a friend and contemporary of De Niro, Sr.
Robert De Niro, Sr. (1922 – 1933) was part of the celebrated New York School of post-war American artists. His work blended abstract and expressionist styles of painting with traditional representational subject matter, bridging the divide between European Modernism and Abstract Expressionism. In 1968 he was awarded the prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship. He studied with Hans Hofmann in New York and in Provincetown from 1939 to 1942. De Niro, along with his wife, Virginia Admiral, was considered by Hofmann to be among his best students. He painted at Provincetown’s famed Days Lumberyard Studios, now the site of the Fine Arts Work Center.
Spotlighting the festivities will be a solo exhibition at the Hudson D. Walker Gallery, ROBERT DE NIRO, SR. (1922-1993): SELECTED WORKS, curated by Megan Fox Kelly, advisor to the estate of the artist. Twenty works by the artist will be on view, including several of his celebrated landscape and interior paintings boasting vibrant colors of distinct modern abstract shapes and invigorating brush strokes. The show also includes examples of his charcoal cubist figure drawings, powerful explorations of the relationship between volume and space. The show is open to the public Saturday, July 13 to Sunday, August 3 from 1:00 pm – 4:00 pm or by appointment. Works are for sale. The exhibition is made possible by the DC Moore Gallery in New York, exclusive representative of the artist’s estate.
Robert De Niro, Jr. spent many of his early years visiting Provincetown with his parents and is a distinguished American actor (Taxi Driver, The Deer Hunter, Raging Bull). He recently co-produced the HBO documentary film about his father, Remembering the Artist:Robert De Niro, Sr. and has been an important advocate for the arts, establishing the Robert De Niro, Sr. Prize, which is awarded annually to a mid-career American artist for exceptional achievements in painting. He is also co-founder of the Tribeca Film Festival and Institute, launched in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks.
Ann Patchett (Bel Canto, State of Wonder, Truth and Beauty: A Friendship, Patron Saint of Liars) is a Fine Arts Work Center fellow (1990-1991) and has won widespread acclaim for her work including the Guggenheim Fellowship, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the PEN/Faukner Award. Her books have been both New York Times Notable Books and New York Times bestsellers. She is the co-owner of Parnassus Books in Nashville, Tennessee and a major spokesperson for independent booksellers. In 2012 Patchett was named by Time magazine as one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World.
