Sergio Gonzalez-Tornero was a Twentieth Century modernist and a master of intaglio and viscosity printing. He studied art at the Slade School of Fine Art at University College London, after which he moved to Paris to study printmaking at the renowned Atelier 17. He later moved to New York City where he worked, alongside his wife, Adrienne Cullom, at Bob Blackburn’s Printmaking Workshop. During a visit to Haida Gwaii, Canada, he became fascinated by the art he saw there, in which he saw a deeply spiritual and gloriously formalist view of life, and it was a powerful influence throughout his career.
Sergio Gonzalez-Tornero was awarded a grant from the Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation and received numerous awards in his lifetime, including the UNESCO Prize at the International Biennial of Prints in Cracow; first prize at the XII Biennale of Latin American Prints from Latin America and The Caribbean in San Juan; and the Trustees’ Prize for Painting at the Art of the Northeast Exhibit at the Silvermine Guild in New Canaan, Connecticut. A retrospective exhibition of his prints was mounted in 1998 at the Antiguo Asilo de Beneficencia in San Juan. He was a member of the Society of American Graphic Artists, Boston Printmakers, and the Philadelphia Print Club.
Gonzalez-Tornero’s work is included in numerous important collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, the New York Public Library, the Milwaukee Art Museum, the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Victoria and Albert Museum.
