Guggenheim International Award

Benjamin Lauder Nicholson, OM was an English painter of abstract compositions, landscape and still-life.

The Val d'Orcia or Valdorcia is a region of Tuscany, central Italy, which extends from the hills south of Siena to Monte Amiata. Its gentle, cultivated hills are occasionally broken by gullies and by picturesque towns and villages such as Pienza, Radicofani and Montalcino. Its landscape has been depicted in works of art from Renaissance painting to modern photography.

Joan Miró i Ferrà was a Spanish painter, sculptor and ceramicist born in Barcelona. He was known as Joan Miró in the art recognition. A museum dedicated to his work, the Fundació Joan Miró, was established in his native city of Barcelona in 1975, and another, the Fundació Pilar i Joan Miró, was established in his adoptive city of Palma in 1981.

The Wall of the Sun and Wall of the Moon are a pair of murals made of ceramics and designed by the Catalan artist Joan Miró for the UNESCO building in Paris. The works were carried out by the ceramicist Josep Llorens Artigas in 1955. Initially, the walls were installed on the Place de Fontenoy in Paris, but afterwards were enclosed in a building that was constructed in order to protect them from damage caused by acid rain.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) aimed at promoting world peace and security through international cooperation in education, arts, sciences and culture. It has 193 member states and 12 associate members, as well as partners in the non-governmental, intergovernmental and private sector. Headquartered at the World Heritage Centre in Paris, France, UNESCO has 53 regional field offices and 199 national commissions that facilitate its global mandate.

Christiaan Karel Appel was a Dutch painter, sculptor, and poet. He started painting at the age of fourteen and studied at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam in the 1940s. He was one of the founders of the avant-garde movement CoBrA in 1948. He was also an avid sculptor and has had works featured in MoMA and other museums worldwide.

Alberto Giacometti was a Swiss sculptor, painter, draftsman and printmaker. Beginning in 1922, he lived and worked mainly in Paris but regularly visited his hometown Borgonovo to see his family and work on his art.