July, 2004 - Nr. 7
Baselitz to receive
Premium Imperiale
TWIG - Georg Baselitz, the German artist famous for turning the art world on its head through his upside-down portraits, has won the Premium Imperiale prize for art - widely considered the "Nobel Prize for Art." The decision, which carries the highest monetary sum awarded to an artist by the Japanese Art Association, was announced earlier this week at the Japanese Embassy in Berlin.
Along with four other artists from around the world, Baselitz will be honored for his life’s work at a ceremony in Tokyo on October 21. He will share a prize worth 608,000 Eur with U.S. sculptor Bruce Nauman, Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki, Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer, and Iranian film director Abbas Kiarostami.
The prize for the next generation of artists, worth 38,000 Eur, will be awarded to the "Young Sound Forum Middle-Europe," a group of young musicians from Germany, Poland, and the Czech Republic.
Among the winners of the Premium Imperiale over the past 15
years are the artists Anselm Kiefer and Sigmar Polke, the singer Dietrich
Fischer-Dieskau, the conductor Claudio Abbado, director Jean-Luc Godard, and
musician Oscar Peterson.
Republished with permission from "The Week in Germany"
