The contemporary artist Byron Kim is the 2019 recipient of the esteemed Robert De Niro, Sr. Prize. Established in 2011 by Robert De Niro, Jr. in honor of his late father, the accomplished painter Robert De Niro, Sr., the prize recognizes a mid-career American artist for their significant and innovative contributions to the field of painting with a $25,000 merit-based prize. Byron Kim is the eighth artist to have received this prize following the Stanley Whitney (2011), Joyce Pensato (2012), Catherine Murphy (2013), Robert Bordo (2014), Laura Owens (2015), R.H. Quaytman (2016), and Henry Taylor (2018).

Byron Kim’s work captures the everyday subject and scenery while balancing formal ingenuity with conceptual sophistication. Kim is widely known for his Sunday Paintings, to which the artist has been committing himself to a single painting of the sky every Sunday on a uniform 35.5 x 35.5 cm canvas since 2001. Byron Kim has been exploring intrinsic spirituality through the mundane and profound details of the everyday. William S. Smith, part of the Robert De Niro Sr. Prize selection committee and Editor of Art in America, remarked, “Byron Kim demonstrates how a minimalist visual vocabulary can be maximally affecting. His paintings reflect his careful attention to the subtleties of color, surface, and light while simultaneously demonstrating the medium’s ability to facilitate everything from broad social engagement to deeply personal rumination.” Kim is currently the subject of a solo exhibition titled Byron Kim: The Sunday Paintings at Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland, USA, through January 5, 2020.