The Hilgos award has been created in memory of Hilda Gorenstein, who was an accomplished painter whose career spanned 75 years. She died at age 93 and left behind her the legacy of an inspired artistic life.

Choosing to call herself Hilgos, Ms. Gorenstein was known for her beautiful marine paintings, which are now in collections all over the world. She was such a skillful painter of water vessels and was chosen to paint an enormous mural depicting the history of the U.S. Navy for Chicago's Century of Progress celebration in 1933.

Hundreds of paintings were completed in the last two years of her life, while she struggled with profound memory loss. The vestiges of her early, masterful renderings of waves, birds, and boats remain, but have been transformed into a new system of spontaneous, personal gestures, bordering on the abstract. The sophisticated color choices and compositions of these late works reveal how sharp her artistic eye remained up until the very end of her life.