Paal Anand’s Heracles Hurls Lichas Wins Second Prize at the 9th Chianciano Biennale

The Culver City artist’s monochrome mythological art is honoured by the jury of Tuscany’s international biennale, and across Europe and the United States.

CULVER CITY, CA, UNITED STATES, September 24, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Conceptual artist and fine-art photographer Paal Anand has been awarded Second Prize at the 9th Chianciano Biennale for Heracles Hurls Lichas, a large-format monochrome photograph from his ongoing Mythiq series. The work was shown this August alongside an international selection of contemporary artists across the Chianciano Art Museum and thirteen historic galleries in the medieval centre of Chianciano Terme, Tuscany, where the Biennale ran from 15 to 29 August 2026.

The Chianciano Biennale is both an exhibition and a juried competition: artists are selected through a worldwide open call judged solely on the strength of the work, and prizes are then awarded across the exhibition, including first, second and third places in each of its award categories. Anand’s prize places Heracles Hurls Lichas among the most highly recognised works of this year’s edition.

“Heracles Hurls Lichas is about a moment that can’t be taken back, a man in unbearable pain turning it on the person closest to him,” said Anand. “To have that image recognised in Italy, in the country whose sculptors taught the world how to hold a body in mid-air, means a great deal to me. These myths still describe us. We are always both Heracles and Lichas: the hand that casts out, and the body suspended in flight.”

ABOUT THE WORK

Heracles Hurls Lichas reimagines one of the most violent episodes in Greek myth: the dying Heracles, maddened by the poison of the Shirt of Nessus, seizing his herald Lichas and casting him into the sea. Working in the high-contrast monochrome that defines Mythiq, Anand transcribes the frozen anguish of classical marble into living flesh: two figures locked in the terrible physics of the moment, caught at the instant of release. The photograph has been exhibited internationally, including at the Arte Laguna Prize 20th Anniversary Exhibition in Shanghai.

A YEAR ON THE INTERNATIONAL STAGE

The prize arrives in a landmark year for the artist. This spring, his holographic installation The Ward That Never Closed, created with the veterans’ nonprofit Veterans Stand Together for the immersive Hospital of Emotions exhibition in Los Angeles, drew a feature in the Los Angeles Times. In summer his work appeared in the Graphis Best100 Exhibition at the Cannery Gallery in San Francisco, presented with Academy of Art University. This autumn Anand takes part in the Barcelona Art Biennial at the Museu Europeu d’Art Modern (MEAM) and he will be a presenter as Ambassador for the Arte Laguna Prize in the Arsenale in Venice, Italy.

ABOUT THE CHIANCIANO BIENNALE

Now in its ninth edition, the Chianciano Biennale is an international competition and curated exhibition organised by London’s Gagliardi Gallery and staged across the Museo d’Arte di Chianciano, some 3,000 square metres of gallery space, and thirteen restored galleries throughout the town’s medieval centre. Open to living artists worldwide with no restriction on theme, medium or style, it selects its roster through an international open call judged on the artwork alone. Its awards include cash prizes for Best Work and for painting, sculpture and installation, work on paper, and digital and photographic work, alongside first, second and third prizes for figurative, abstract, applied, and photographic and digital art.

ABOUT PAAL ANAND

Paal Anand is a Canadian-born conceptual artist and fine-art photographer based in Culver City, California. After more than two decades in Hollywood visual effects with credits including Hellboy, Pirates of the Caribbean, Ghost Rider and The Italian Job, and early R&D on the software that became Autodesk Maya, he turned to fine art. His practice spans Mythiq, surrealist staged mythological photography; Priceless Habitats, platinum/palladium prints on vellum with gold and palladium leaf; Piezography Studies, seven-shade carbon-pigment monochrome; and holographic and immersive installation. A Graphis Master with fifteen Graphis Gold Photography Awards, he was inducted into the Arte Laguna World Hall of Fame, serves as 2026 Arte Laguna Prize USA Ambassador, and was named Fondazione Effetto Arte Artist of the Year 2025. He is Co-Chair of the Culver City Arts Foundation. He holds a degree in computer science from UC Santa Barbara.

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