Spain honors architect Frank Gehry

U.S. architect Frank Gehry was announced here Wednesday as the winner of Spain’s 2014 Prince of Asturias Award for the Arts.

The Canadianborn Gehry’s signature structures include the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, and Prague’s NationaleNederlanden building, known as the Dancing House.

Gehry, 85, received his profession’s highest honor, the Pritzker Prize, in 1989.

He is a leading exponent of “the deconstructionist movement, characterized by fragmentation and the rupture of a linear design process, resulting in buildings with a striking visual appearance,” the Prince of Asturias Foundation said.

Gehry becomes the sixth architect to be selected for the Asturias Arts Award, joining Briton Norman Foster, Brazil’s late Oscar Niemeyer and a trio of Spaniards Francisco Javier Saenz de Oiza, Santiago Calatrava and Rafael Moneo who shared the 2012 prize.

The winners of this year’s seven other Asturias Awards will be announced in the coming weeks.

Spain’s Crown Prince Felipe will present the prizes in the fall at a gala in Oviedo, capital of the principality of Asturias.

Along with 50,000 euros (about $69,500) and a sculpture by Joan Miro, each award winner receives a diploma and an insignia bearing the Prince of Asturias Foundation’s coat of arms.

Established in 1981, the prizes are regarded as the IberoAmerican world’s equivalent of the Nobels.

Among past recipients of the arts award are Riccardo Muti, Woody Allen, the late Paco de Lucia, Bob Dylan and Pedro Almodovar.