Napoles Marty, a US painter and sculptor based between Connecticut and Rhode Island, has been awarded the 2026 Frieze Los Angeles Impact Prize. Marty will receive $25,000 and a solo stand at the fair, which opens in late February at Santa Monica Airport. The prize, now in its fifth year, provides support and recognition to an early-career artist and is given in partnership with a non-profit organisation, in this instance the Connecticut-based arts incubator Nxthvn.
Marty will collaborate with fair organisers and Diana Nawi, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s curator of special projects, on the artist’s solo stand. The artist’s work, informed by his own dream imagery as well as his Cuban heritage (he was featured in the 2015 Havana Biennial), foregrounds figures that meld human and animal features. These painted, chainsaw-carved and charred characters function as spiritual protectors.
“I was impressed by the continuity of his visual language across drawing, painting, and sculpture,” Nawi said in a statement. “There is a dynamic expressiveness throughout his practice that conjures an inner world made tangible.”
Marty was selected by a jury that included the collectors and philanthropists Allison K. Berg and Maisha C. Clark. He was a member of Nxthvn’s sixth cohort (2024-25), participating in a ten-month fellowship at the New Haven-based organisation founded by the artist Titus Kaphar and the impact investor Jason Price. His work was featured prominently in an exhibition devoted to that Nxthvn cohort at James Cohan Gallery in New York last spring.
Past recipients of the Frieze Impact Prize have included the street artist Victor "Marka27" Quiñonez (in 2025), the textile artist Gary Tyler (2024), Mary Baxter, Maria Gaspar, Narsiso Martinez and Dread Scott.
- Frieze Los Angeles, Santa Monica Airport, 26 February-1 March 2026