Renowned Brazilian artist Cildo Meireles has been announced as the recipient of the prestigious Roswitha Haftmann Prize, the art award with the largest cash prize in Europe. Meireles will be awarded 150,000 Swiss francs, equivalent to just over $174,000.
The Roswitha Haftmann Prize is named after Swiss dealer Roswitha Haftmann, whose Zurich gallery operated until her passing in 1998. The prize, now managed by her foundation, is regularly granted to living artists.
Previous prizewinners have typically been established artists. Gülsün Karamustafa, the 2021 recipient, was recently selected to feature at the Turkish Pavilion during the 2024 Venice Biennale. Valie Export, the 2019 laureate, is widely regarded as one of the most significant feminist artists in history. Other notable past winners include Cindy Sherman, Pierre Huyghe, and Maria Lassnig. Meireles, born in 1948 in Rio de Janeiro and still based there, becomes the first Latin American artist ever to receive the award in its 22-year history.
Meireles is renowned for his thought-provoking projects, such as “Insertions into Ideological Circuits,” a series of sculptural works from the 1970s. These pieces resembled familiar objects like Coca-Cola bottles and banknotes but carried anti-capitalist and anti-colonialist messages. His works often critique Brazil and its political landscape.
Throughout the years, Meireles has continued to create large-scale sculptural installations. One notable example is “Babel” (2001), a tower made of television sets that display programming from different channels in various languages.
Yilmaz Dziewior, director of the Museum Ludwig in Cologne and a board member of the Roswitha Haftmann Foundation, praised Meireles’ ability to engage audiences intellectually and emotionally through politically charged and aesthetically captivating works.
In a separate art award announcement in Switzerland, artist Olaf Holzapfel was declared the winner of the Zurich Art Prize. This award includes a cash prize of 100,000 Swiss francs ($116,000), with four-fifths of the amount allocated as the budget for an exhibition at the Museum Haus Konstructiv, which collaborates with Zurich Insurance Company Ltd. to present the prize.
These art prizes celebrate the achievements of exceptional artists and provide them with the financial support and recognition they deserve. Cildo Meireles’ groundbreaking contributions to the art world have rightfully earned him this distinguished honor, further solidifying his influential status within the global art community.