Jackie Saccoccio, Painter of Intoxicating Abstractions, Wins the 2015 Artadia NADA Award

Today, to mark the opening of this year’s NADA New York art fair, Artadia and the New Art Dealers Alliance banded together to bestow the 2015 Artadia NADA award to the painter Jackie Saccoccio. Selected by two esteemed art-world judges, Bard Center for Curatorial Studies director Tom Eccles and Jewish Museum assistant curator Kelly Taxter, the $4,000 award was given in recognition of the best artwork in the fair. 

That artwork, Portrait (Cosmic Baroque) (2015), is displayed at the booth of Eleven Rivington, and it exemplifies the exuberant, blissed-out painting style that has made Saccoccio a favorite of collectors—with a twist. While the canvas is marked by the same lavishly sensuous color palette and abstract composition that made her famous—and which may remind some of a happier Gerhard Richter—the painting, part of a fairly new series, also incorporates a subtle echo of figuration. Inspired by Italian Renaissance portraiture (hence the title), the central part of the painting contains an assortment of gestures that, when taken together, can provide a hint of a person’s head.

The award comes to Saccoccio, 52, at a point in her career when her art is gaining wider renown outside of New York City. Recently her work has been acquired into the collections of the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University and the MCA Chicago, and she has a solo show upcoming at Chicago’s Corbett vs. Dempsey gallery. Her prize-winning painting, it should be said, was still available for purchase as of the first afternoon of the fair, in the range of $35,000 to $40,000.

Here is the painting below, which can be purchased on Artspace: