Submissions Now Open!

12th Biennial Alexander Rutsch Award and Exhibition for Painting

Winner Receives $5,000 Cash Prize + Solo Exhibition

Pelham Art Center is pleased to announce a call for entries for the 12th biennial Alexander Rutsch Award and Exhibition for Painting. This juried competition is open to U.S.-based artists aged 19 and older. The winner is awarded a $5,000 cash prize, a solo exhibition and printed catalog at Pelham Art Center and $2,500 is divided among the finalists. Pelham Art Center is proud to sponsor this competition and award honoring the memory and artistic achievement of artist Alexander Rutsch (1916 – 1997). Rutsch actively supported Pelham Art Center for more than 25 years. After his death, friends, family and supporters established a generous fund to support a biennial, open, juried competition in painting.

The Alexander Rutsch Award and Exhibition program continues Rutsch’s belief that art transcends all of our humanity. Rutsch saw art as “the stone in the water sending ripples throughout the universe.” His extraordinary work, rich in the celebration of life and our shared human experiences, is included in many public and private collections throughout the U.S. and Europe.

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See the 11th Biennial Winner Matthew Cole

Cole employs traditional painting and preliminary printmaking methods to interpret memories of actual and subconscious events – amalgamations of real life and fantasy

Learn more about Alexander Rutsch

The celebrated Austrian artist approaches painting and sculpture with the eyes of a child and the hand of a poet, constantly in the quest for rhythms of form and vibrations of color