Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Diana González Gandolfi traveled widely while growing up, living in Colombia and Indonesia before settling with her family in New York City in 1965.  Her abstract paintings and prints are heavily influenced by these early experiences and focus on themes such as place, identity and memory.  

 

Living in NYC in the mid 1960’s had a big influence in her decision to become an artist and began her training at the Art Students League and Hunter College where she was first introduced to printmaking.  She continued her studies at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts (MA) where she received a BFA in 1974 in a combined program with Tufts University.  In 1975 she completed her graduate studies at the Museum School receiving a Fifth Year Graduate Certificate in Fine Arts and winning a prestigious traveling fellowship award.  In addition to her art degrees, she also holds an M.Ed in Art Therapy from the Institute for the Arts and Human Development at Lesley University in Cambridge, MA, which she received after years of teaching art in prisons.

 

Over the course of her career, González Gandolfi has been the recipient of numerous awards and grants from a variety of institutions. These include Traveling Fellowships in 1975 & 1984from the Boston Museum of Fine Arts; Distinguished Artist Award and Fellowship for Printmaking in 1986 as well as Painting Fellowships in 1991 & 1994 from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts; New Jersey Artist Print and Paper Fellowship from the Brodsky Center for Innovative Editions at Rutgers University in 2001; Painting Fellowship in 2002 from the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundationas well as a Residency Grant from the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation to attendthe Vermont Studio Center that same year.  In 2012 she was selected to participate in a collaborative Editions Project: Four Artists & Four Master Printers, a grant project awarded to the Printmaking Center of NJ by the New Jersey State Council in the Arts.

 

González Gandolfi’s work has been exhibited nationally and abroad in galleries, universities, libraries and museums since 1975.  Among her numerous one-person shows is her recent Navigated Territories exhibition at the Hunterdon Art Museum in Clinton, NJ last summer.  In these works, she uses map imagery metaphorically, as an abstract concept to explore personal and universal narratives that reflect upon her past and future.

 

Her paintings and prints can be found in many institutional and corporate collections including Fidelity Management in NY & MA, Johnson & Johnson World Headquarters in New Brunswick, NJ, Novartis Pharmaceutical Corporation in East Hanover, NJ, the Newark Public Library in Newark, NJ, the Brevard Museum of Art in Melbourne, FL, the Hunterdon Art Museum in Clinton, NJ, the Montclair Art Museum in Montclair, NJ, the Noyes Museum of Art in Oceanville, NJ, The Zimmerli Art Museum in New Brunswick, NJ, the New Jersey State Museum in Trenton, NJ, the Morris Museum in Morristown, NJ, and the Perc Tucker Regional Gallery in Townsville, Australia.