The rise of Vincent Fantauzzo as an artist of considerable significance continues unabated.
With his portrait of Oscar-nominated director Baz Luhrmann, Fantauzzo was awarded the world’s richest portrait prize – the Doug Moran National Prize for Portraiture, valued at $A150,000 – announced in Sydney in May.
The award crowned a successful three years for the artist.
His portrait of Heath Ledger, finished only weeks before the actor’s tragic death, picked up the People’s Choice at the 2008 Archibald Prize, arguably Australia’s most prestigious (see Ben Quilty Wins Archibald Prize). He had considered withdrawing from the competition – it was Ledger’s parents and friends who pushed him to enter. The portrait attracted more than 10,000 public votes from a record attendance of 130,000 for the Archibald Prize 2008 exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney.
The following year he won the same award, on this occasion for his portrait of Brandon Walters, the young star of Luhrmann’s Australia. And whilst Fantauzzo has yet to win the main award in the Archibald, in 2011 his portrait of celebrity chef Matt Moran was presented with the Packing Room Prize.
It’s a considerable achievement for an artist who graduated with his Master of Fine Art at RMIT in Melbourne as recently as 2005 and, before his first award at the Archibald, had only a handful of solo exhibitions in Melbourne to his name.
The Doug Moran National Portrait Prize
First established in 1988 as a biannual acquisitive award by Doug Moran to celebrate Australia’s Bicentenary, the prize was, in its early years, associated with the Tweed River Regional Art Gallery.
Located on the border of New South Wales and Queensland, a major feud between the Trustees of the gallery and Doug Moran resulted in an out-of-court settlement in 2004 and the removal of the prize to Sydney.
Awarded annually since 2006, the Moran Prize is officially homeless although since moving to the Harbour City, the 30+ finalists of each year have been exhibited at the State Library of New South Wales.
Previous winners include Ben Quilty (the winner of this year’s Archibald Prize), Peter Wegner and, in 2010, Michael Zavros. Unlike many other major awards, The Doug Moran Prize has never shied away from presenting the prize to young and emerging artists. A recently graduated Fiona Lowry in 2008 and Leslie Rice (2007), better known at the time as a tattoo artist, are both recipients of the award.
And Fantauzzo? He simply continues to go from strength to strength. In October 2010 he made his debut in New York with an exhibition of 30 portraits painted in 30 days, spending 6-7 hours per day on each painting.
Shown at the prestigious National Arts Club, subjects included some of the city’s hippest cultural figures, including supermodel Chanel Iman, former boxer Lennox Lewis and the DJ Mark Ronson.
Sources
- Amy Yang, 'Vincent Fantauzzo Wins Doug Moran Prize', Australian Art Collector
- Michael Lallo, 'Portrait of the people's choice' The Age
- Sharon Verghis, 'How divorce was raised to a high art' Sydney Morning Herald
- The Doug Moran Prize website
- Vincent Fantauzzo website
Keith Lawrence - Published writer of articles in magazines, newspapers and websites, predominantly on culture, alongside ghostwriter/editor/copywriter.
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