NEW YORK, NY.- The Estate of Robert De Niro Sr. announced the winner of The Robert De Niro Sr. Prize which focuses on a mid-career American artist devoted to the pursuit of excellence and innovation in painting. Award winner Robert Bordo, will receive this year’s $25,000 prize, administered by Tribeca Film Institute (TFI), for his considerable contribution to the field of painting. Bordo is the fourth recipient of the merit-based prize, which pays tribute to the work and legacy of accomplished painter Robert De Niro Sr.

Robert De Niro Sr. was part of the celebrated New York School of post-war American artists. In his honor, this award was created by his son and TFI Co-Founder Robert De Niro, to support the next generation of artistic achievements. Stanley Whitney received the inaugural award in 2011, Joyce Pensato in 2012, and Catherine Murphy in 2013. The Robert De Niro Sr. Prize is among the first of its kind to celebrate and shine a light on influential mid-career artists.

“This is the fourth year we’ve honored the legacy of my father and his outstanding work as an artist with the Robert De Niro Sr. Prize,” said Robert De Niro. “This year, I’m so pleased to award artist, leader and teacher Robert Bordo, whose achievements in painting have continued to drive innovation in the art world.”

A selection committee of distinguished individuals in the art world was appointed to nominate candidates and select the prize recipient: Richard Flood, Director of Special Projects and Curator at Large; Thelma Golden, Director and Chief Curator at The Studio Museum in Harlem and Lindsay Pollock, Editor-in-chief at Art in America Magazine.

Richard Flood praises his work, saying “Robert Bordo’s palette is unique. The colors are poured into paintings that hover calmly between the representational and the abstract, refusing to relax into either genre. If beauty and unease are polar extremes in Bordo’s work, there is also humor mostly directed at his profession and the world in which it is practiced.” Lindsay Pollock commented, “Robert Bordo is the epitome of a dedicated painter. His works often appear abstract but are not. Unlike much painting today, there is no spectacle or decorative flourish in his works. They reveal a serious investigation of pictorial space and what paint can do. His longtime role as a teacher at Cooper Union also underscores his commitment to painting.”

Bordo is an Associate Professor of Art at The Cooper Union, New York, where he teaches in the painting program. His most recent one-person exhibition was Drawing Installation at The Suburban in Oak Park, Illinois (2014); he was included in New Paintings at Alexander and Bonin Gallery in New York (2014). Bordo has been the recipient of many prestigious fellowships and grants including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship in 2007, the Canada Council Arts Grant, the Tesuque Foundation Arts Fellowship Award, the MacDowell Colony Fellowship and a Painting Fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts.

In 2003, Bordo was a visiting critic at the Glasgow School of Art and at the Yale University MFA program. In 2007, he was a visiting artist at the American Academy in Rome. Bordo also collaborated with choreographer, Mark Morris to design sets and costumes for Dido and Aeneas, which was performed in Brussels (1989), at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (1998) and as part of the ‘Mostly Mozart’ Festival at Lincoln Center (2013).