Caio Fonseca (born 1959) is an American painter. He is the son of the Uruguayan sculptor

Gonzalo Fonseca Gonzalo Fonseca (2 July 1922 – 11 June 1997) was a Uruguayan artist known for his stone sculpting. He originally studied to be an architect at the University of Montevideo, but discovered modern art in 1942 after working in the Taller Torre ...

; the artist Bruno Fonseca was his brother, and the writer

Isabel Fonseca Isabel Fonseca (born 1961) is an American-Uruguayan writer. She is best known for her books '' Bury Me Standing: The Gypsies and Their Journey'' and ''Attachment''. She is married to novelist Martin Amis. Early life Isabel Fonseca was born in Ne ...

is his sister.

Life and work

Fonseca grew up in the

West Village The West Village is a neighborhood in the western section of the larger Greenwich Village neighborhood of Lower Manhattan, New York City. The traditional boundaries of the West Village are the Hudson River to the west, West 14th Street to th ...

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

, where his father had his sculpture studio. He lived for five years in

Barcelona Barcelona ( , , ) is a city on the coast of northeastern Spain. It is the capital and largest city of the autonomous community of Catalonia, as well as the second most populous municipality of Spain. With a population of 1.6 million within ci ...

, Spain, where he studied under , whose father had taught Gonzalo Fonseca in Uruguay in the 1940s. After this he spent some time in Uruguay, moved for several years to

Pietrasanta Pietrasanta is a town and ''comune'' on the coast of northern Tuscany in Italy, in the province of Lucca. Pietrasanta is part of Versilia, on the last foothills of the Apuan Alps, about north of Pisa. The town is located off the coast, where the ...

, close to the marble quarries of

Carrara Carrara ( , ; , ) is a city and ''comune'' in Tuscany, in central Italy, of the province of Massa and Carrara, and notable for the white or blue-grey marble quarried there. It is on the Carrione River, some west-northwest of Florence. Its mot ...

in north-western

Tuscany it, Toscano (man) it, Toscana (woman) , population_note = , population_blank1_title = , population_blank1 = , demographics_type1 = Citizenship , demographics1_footnotes = , demographics1_title1 = Italian , demogra ...

, Italy, and then lived and painted in

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...

. He returned to New York and in 1993 had his first solo show at the Charles Cowles Gallery in SoHo, Manhattan, after which the

Metropolitan Museum The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...

bought two of his paintings. The

Whitney Museum of American Art The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is an art museum in the Meatpacking District and West Village neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1930 by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1875–194 ...

in New York bought one of his canvases in 2001, and the

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...

bought three in 2005. Fonseca also has works in the

Houston Museum of Fine Arts The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH), is an art museum located in the Houston Museum District of Houston, Texas. With the recent completion of an eight-year campus redevelopment project, including the opening of the Nancy and Rich Kinder Build ...

and in the Smithsonian in

Washington, DC ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan ...

. Fonseca had a one-man exhibition at the

Institut Valencià d'Art Modern The Institut Valencià d'Art Modern (; es, link=no, Instituto Valenciano de Arte Moderno; English: "Valencian Institute of Modern Art"), also known by the acronym IVAM, was the first center of modern art created in Spain, opening in 1989 in the ...

Valencia Valencia ( va, València) is the capital of the autonomous community of Valencia and the third-most populated municipality in Spain, with 791,413 inhabitants. It is also the capital of the province of the same name. The wider urban area al ...

, Spain, in 2003, and at the

Corcoran Gallery of Art The Corcoran Gallery of Art was an art museum in Washington, D.C., United States, that is now the location of the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design, a part of the George Washington University. Overview The Corcoran School of the Arts & Design ...

in Washington, DC, in 2004. Fonseca has studios in the East Village of Manhattan, and in Pietrasanta in Tuscany.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Fonseca, Caio 20th-century American painters American male painters 21st-century American painters 1959 births American people of Uruguayan descent Living people 20th-century American printmakers People from Greenwich Village American artists Hispanic and Latino American artists 20th-century American male artists