2025 Hohenberg Travel Award: Leon Toro (MFA 2025)

The Hohenberg Travel Award is awarded to a full-time MFA or Certificate scholar who has attended the New York Studio School for no less than 4 semesters. The scholar is awarded a stipend for European journey. Leon Toro (MFA 2025) was the 2025 recipient and shares his expertise under.

Wonder:Wander

Throughout my time at NYSS, I turned more and more absorbed within the qualities of pure gentle and its illustration in portray. The lengthy custom of observing and depicting the world—its sunlit expanses and shadowed corners—has all the time held a deep magnetism for me. These photographs really feel timeless, poetic, and sure to lived expertise. Toward the top of the grasp’s program, I discovered myself particularly drawn to British and Flemish portray, the place local weather and environment form a subdued, overcast gentle that felt acquainted to my very own atmosphere. The qualities of chiaroscuro, obscurity, and temper in these works intently aligned with the issues already current in my portray.

With this in thoughts, I centered my travels on the precept of sunshine—learning how artists throughout areas and centuries approached presence, shade, and environment. Beginning in Northwestern Europe and transferring south, I allowed gentle to stay my lens, whilst I encountered unfamiliar artists, supplies, and kinds. I labored plein air each time doable, utilizing atmosphere and local weather as each topic and trainer.

I started in England, wanting to see painters akin to Gwen John, J.M.W. Turner, and Walter Sickert. In London, I spent days returning to the Tate and nationwide museums, typically from open to shut, drawing always and constructing a visible reminiscence of what moved me. While it was fulfilling to come across artists I admired, it was equally highly effective to find painters I had recognized solely by title. Mantegna’s delicacy and precision felt sacred; Poussin’s geometry and multi-figural compositions resonated deeply with the rigor of my coaching at NYSS. Seeing Corot in individual renewed my pleasure for painterly contact and experimentation. One of essentially the most visceral moments got here after spending almost an hour surrounded by Rothko’s—I left feeling altered, cleansed, and deeply linked to the reality in his work.

The Tudor portraits on the National Portrait Gallery shocked me with their vivid strangeness and quiet authority. This sense of reverence continued as I traveled to the Netherlands and Belgium, the place Dutch and Flemish portray—rooted in faith and hereditary rule—revealed a rare subtlety and intentionality. Moving by way of Amsterdam, Brussels, Bruges, and Ghent, I felt immersed in a preserved world. Though the landscapes have been typically austere, the sunsets have been unforgettable. In Amsterdam, the Stedelijk Museum stood out to me as one of the compelling trendy collections I’ve skilled. It was right here that I linked deeply with the work of Igshaan Adams and, unexpectedly, with a looping video by Ivan Hoover that I returned to in thought for days.

In Belgium, I encountered exceptional works by artists not often mentioned, together with mural-scale work by Constant Montald that felt illuminated by moonlight. Ingres appeared repeatedly all through my travels, his work quietly haunting me with its layered meanings. A pilgrimage to the Ghent Altarpiece was unforgettable, nevertheless it was Hans Memling’s work at St. John’s Hospital in Bruges that affected me most profoundly. His portraits revealed the facility of nuance—a slight tilt of the pinnacle, a restrained gesture. The Triptych of Saint John struck me as extra curious and resonant than even the altarpiece in its composition and rhythm. Everywhere, the craftsmanship of those cities—inside and outdoors museums—deepened my sense of connection to a shared human legacy of constructing.

On my approach to Spain, I spent a number of days in Paris revisiting acquainted collections with new eyes. At the Musée d’Orsay, I used to be particularly moved by the works of Maurice Denis, Aristide Maillol, and Puvis de Chavannes. Seeing so many Nabis works collectively, alongside ornamental arts, felt revelatory—significantly Vuillard, whose work lastly unlocked one thing I had lengthy sensed however not absolutely understood.

I entered Spain by way of Bilbao, visiting each the Guggenheim and the Fine Arts Museum, the place a big exhibition of Georg Baselitz left a robust impression. From there, I traveled alongside the northern coast to a number of cave portray websites. These locations have been not like something I had skilled. What struck me most was not solely the pictures, however how inseparable they have been from the caves themselves—their shapes, openings, darkness, and the exact orientation of the viewer’s physique and torchlight. In areas with out pure gentle, these works felt sacred, intentional, and charged with historical vitality. They prompted deep reflection alone apply: what I’m attempting to speak, why type issues, and the way fact and honesty reside within the act of constructing.

From the quiet fantastic thing about northern Spain, I traveled to Madrid, the place I spent over every week immersed within the Prado, Reina Sofía, and Thyssen museums. Spanish painters—Velázquez, Goya, El Greco, Titian—have lengthy influenced my understanding of brushwork and freedom with paint. Of all of the works I encountered, Las Hilanderas (The Weavers) by Velázquez held me the longest. Its layered realities, masterful composition, and enduring thriller stay elegant. On my remaining day, I traveled to Toledo to see El Greco’s The Burial of the Count of Orgaz. Seeing it in individual revealed a non secular structure not possible to understand in copy—the ascent from earthly to celestial rendered by way of type, geometry, and lightweight.

My five-week journey was solely doable by way of the generosity of the varsity, its donors, and its employees. The time allowed for slowness, marvel, and deep trying. I return nonetheless processing what I absorbed, however with a renewed confidence and openness towards my apply. Light—past luminescence—has come to represent life itself: its brevity, vitality, and quiet brilliance. Art, like breath, is a method of honoring that vitality. I went to NYSS for an training and left with a profound preparedness for my life as an artist, stuffed with gratitude, curiosity, and hope for what lies forward.