The Awards
HM Queen Sonja Art Foundation was established in 2011 to generate interest in and promote the development of graphic art. The Foundation presents three awards every other year.
With its focus on international graphic art in all its expressions and techniques, the Queen Sonja Print Awards are set to become the most prestigious prizes within this field of contemporary art.
Queen Sonja Print Award
The Queen Sonja Print Award has become the world’s leading award for graphic art and is presented every other year to a young, ambitious and promising artist who has excelled in the field of printmaking. A wide range of international professionals, curators, artists and art institutions nominate talented artists from all over the world for this prestigious prize.
The nominees reflect the breadth of contemporary printmaking around the world, ranging from traditional forms to new approaches involving installation, collage and performance. No printing technique or way of expression is to be excluded as long as the printing element is apparent. There is no age limit, but older and clearly long-established artists will not be considered for this award.
The winner receives a cash prize of NOK 400 000 and an educational stay at the Atelje Larsen art studio in Helsingborg, Sweden. The cash prize is determined by the board, and taken from the yield on the Foundation’s capital, along with gifts and other contributions received by the Foundation.
Winners of the Queen Sonja Print Award:
- 2020: Ciara Phillips, Canada/UK
- 2018: Emma Nishimura, Canada
- 2016: Tauba Auerbach, USA
- 2014: Svend-Allan Sørensen, Denmark
- 2012: Tiina Kivinen, Finland
Nominees
Nominees 2020
a - h
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Alsharif, Azar
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Andersen, Julie Riis
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Baltzersen, Idun
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Bang, Malou da Cunha
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Bariball, Anna
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Bell, Inka
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Benjelloun, Zineb
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Causic, Mario
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Chan, Kristina
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Dawood, Shezad
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Giri, Khokan
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Harris, Caroline Jane
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Herrera, Inma
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Homsombut, Pimpen
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Hultenberg, Kristofer
i - p
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Kazama, Sachiko
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Khumalo, Themba
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Kipruto, Abdul
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Kovach, Taras
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Layton, Sophie
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Mackay, Madeline
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Malling, Sverre
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Marin, Livia
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Mohorovic, Tina
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Nio-Juss, Noora
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Nirmal, Madhini
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Oliver, Marilène
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Philips, Ciara
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Phu, Jason
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Pojar, Stefanie
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Provosty, Nathalie
q - å
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Quamina, Simonette
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Quang Pham Khac
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Sami, Awni
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Sass, Julie
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Sorel, Agathe
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Thongpayong, Amorn
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Umberto, Giovanni
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Vasiljeva, Ola
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Vilela, Fernando
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Welker, Joshua
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Zamojski, Honza

Phillips, Ciara "Affinity", 2018
Woodcut, relief print and screenprint on paper
200 x 240 cm
Photo: Daniel Persson
Courtesy of the artist
Award Winner 2020
Statement from the jury:
"The jury is unanimously convinced by the fervor of Ciara Phillips’ commitment to the medium of printmaking, the boldness of her formal and social experiments within it, and the maturity and confidence of her artistic outlook and attainment in general. Her belief in collaborative practice, manifest in her ongoing Workshop project, grows from a set of political and aesthetic concerns that she elaborates and elevates through concerted making.
Beyond her graphic and compositional prowess, Phillips is also a keen spatial thinker, adept at expanding beyond the conventional wall and frame. Without sacrificing seriousness, her work is imbued with a sense of wonder and delight in the serendipity and collaborative nature of this creative process. The jury further believes that Phillips is at an ideal point in her career to both benefit from and bring credit to the prize, giving renewed prominence to the field of printmaking and the Foundation’s role within it.
Nominees 2018
Roma Auskalnyte, (Lithuania), Christiane Baumgartner (Germany), Andrea Büttner (Germany), Phillip Chen (USA), Weixin Quek Chong (Singapore),Chad Cordeiro & Nathaniel Sheppard III (South Africa), Keith Coventry (Great Britain), Damien De Lepeleire (Belgium), Peter Drew (Australia), Christian Rodriguez Fuentes (Chile), Matjaž Geder (Slovenia), Versia Abeda Harris (Barbados), Mattias Härenstam(Sweden), Merja Isomaa-James (Finland), Hansina Iversen (Faroe Islands), Michael Iveson (Northern Ireland), Heehyun Jeong (South Korea), Koo Jeong A (South Korea), Banele Khoza (South Africa), Michael Kirkman (Great Britain), Thomas Kilpper(Germany), Elias Mung'ora (Kenya), Emma Nishimura (Canada), Octora (Indonesia), Kouseki Ono (Japan), Renata Papišta (Bosnia-Hercegovina), Srikanta Paul (India), Belkis Ramirez (Dominican Republic),Miriam Rudolph (Paraguay), Giancarlo Scaglia (Peru), Bahia Shehab (Lebanon/ Egypt), Shahzhia Sikander (Pakistan/ USA), Viktoria Wendel Skousen (Denmark), Puritip Suriyapatarapun (Thailand), Ephrem Solomon Tegegn (Ethiopia), Thammasin Darunkan (Thailand), Alexander Tovborg (Denmark), Tatu Tuominen (Finland), Nicolás Paris Veléz (Colombia)Marianne Vierø (Denmark), Lee Wagstaff (Great Britain), Bill Woodrow (Great Britain)
Nominees 2016
Karo Akporiere (Nigeria), Nazgol Ansarinia (Iran), Ewan Atkinson (Barbados), Tauba Auerbach (USA), Benjamin Badock (Germany), Jyotirmoy Dalapati (India), Boris Campos Ernst (Chile), Esther Fleckner (Denmark), Joscelyn E. Gardner (Barbados/Canada), Fuki Hamada (Japan), Johnny Hannah (UK), Samueli Heimonen (Finland), Joseph James (USA/Finland), Jussi Juurinen (Finland), Tom Kosmo (Norway), Katja Mater (Netherlands), Sabine Moritz (Germany), Jon Erik Nyholm (Denmark), Thom Ogonga (Kenya), Kyra Pape (South Africa), Praween Piangchoompu (Thailand), Liliana Porter (Argentine/USA), Julia Rommel (USA), Morten Schelde (Denmark), Andreas Siekmann (Germany), Slavs and Tartars (Eurasia), Josh Smith (USA), Kate Sweetapple (Australia), Elmar Vestner (Germany), Richard Woods (UK), Mojca Zlokarnik (Slovenia).
Nominees 2014
Cathrine Dahl and Ørjan Aas (Norway), Daniel Milan (Denmark), Mikael Kihlman (Sweden), Annu Vertanen (Finland), Valgerdur Hauksdòttir (Iceland), Minako Masui (Japan / Sweden), Ane Mette Hol (Norway), Hugleikur Dagsson (Iceland), Svend-Allan Sørensen (Denmark), Tuula Lehtinen (Finland), Vappu Johansson (Finland), Elina Sipilä (Finland), Adam Saks ( Denmark).
Jury
To ensure its international impact, the QSPA employs a broad-based nomination process for the Queen Sonja Print Award every second year, inviting representatives of key institutions and organizations throughout the world to nominate artists for the prize. To award the world’s most prestigious prize within fine art printmaking, the Foundation recruits the art world’s visionaries to judge the awards. Our juries embody our commitment to honouring the most promising talent, and our dedication to the diversity and universality of graphic art.
Jury 2020
Emi Eu
Emi Eu has been an important member of STPI – Creative Workshop & Gallery Singapore from 2001. Since becoming Director in 2009 and now Executive Director, she has led the organization towards global expansion, introducing exciting collaborations with renowned artists both within Asia and from the West.
Under her directorship, STPI became the first gallery from Singapore to participate in the prestigious art fair, Art Basel in Basel, back in 2013. To date, it is the only gallery from Singapore to participate in all three editions of the Art Basel fairs. She is a member of the Selection Committee for Art Basel Hong Kong. Since 2019 she has been heading S.E.A. Focus, an initiative led by STPI which brings together a curated selection of some of the finest artists and galleries from across Southeast Asia to showcase contemporary art in and of the region.
Eu previously held the position of Programme Director at Fondation d'entreprise Hermès Aloft in Singapore from 2007 to 2019. She also served as the Vice President and President between 2012 and 2018 for Art Galleries Association Singapore (AGAS). She was an Adjunct Faculty for the course Art History & Civilisation: East & West at the Singapore Management University from 2001 to 2017.
Christopher Le Brun
Christopher Le Brun is a painter, printmaker and sculptor. Born in Portsmouth in 1951 he trained at the Slade and Chelsea Schools of Art, London. In his early career, he was a double prize winner at the John Moores exhibitions, 1978 & 1980, also showing in the Venice Biennale, 1982, and the ground-breaking Zeitgeist at the Martin-Gropius Bau, Berlin 1982. His work can be found in museum collections including the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Arts, New York; Tate, the V&A and the British Museum, London; the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia and the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, USA.
For the last thirty years Le Brun has continuously served as a trustee of major British art institutions: Tate, National Gallery, Dulwich Picture Gallery, the Royal Drawing School and the National Portrait Gallery. Elected to the Royal Academy of Arts in 1996, he became the first ever Professor of Drawing. He was subsequently elected President from 2011-2019. During this period, he oversaw the most significant master plan redevelopment in the Academy’s 250 year history and is widely acknowledged as having revitalised the Academy’s reputation through its world class exhibitions, post-graduate school, and Academician membership.
Le Brun is a painter, sculptor and printmaker. He was elected to the RA in the category Engraver in recognition of the importance he ascribes to print media, and his long-term association with master printmakers in the UK and abroad.
His work is characterised by an adherence to the essential values of touch, light, space and colour while maintaining a questioning and strongly individual stance in relation to contemporary art history. Early on he was described variously as a post-modernist or neo-expressionist. His art is deeply rooted in the long tradition of the English appreciation of landscape and nature - whether expressed in painting, poetry or music - which provide a common ground frequently referred to throughout his work.
Philip Tinari
Philip Tinari is Director and CEO of UCCA Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing. Since joining in 2011, he has led its transformation from a founder-driven private museum into China’s leading independent contemporary art institution, presenting a wide range of exhibitions and programs to an annual audience of over one million visitors.
In 2018, UCCA opened a second location, UCCA Dune, in an award-winning building buried under the sand on the beach in Beidaihe.
Tinari was founding editor of the magazine LEAP and is a contributing editor of Artforum. He was co-curator of the 2017 exhibition “Art and China after 1989: Theater of the World” at the Guggenheim and SFMOMA, and curator of the 2016 exhibition “Bentu: Chinese Artists in a Time of Turbulence and Transformation” at Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris. He is a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum and a fellow of the Public Intellectuals Program of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations. Fluent in Mandarin, Tinari holds degrees from Duke and Harvard.
Previous Juries
- Lars Nittve, Mark Nash and Tauba Auerbach - 2018
- Starr Figura, Ute Meta Bauer and Martin Puryear - 2016
- HM Queen Sonja, Ian McKeever, Rasmus Urwald, Tiina Kivinen and Ole Larsen - 2014
- HM Queen Sonja, Ørnulf Opdahl, Kjell Nupen, Ole Larsen and Karin Hellandsjø - 2012
QSPA Inspirational Award
The QSPA Inspirational Award is awarded a Nordic artist who is currently pursuing, or has recently completed, his or her art education, and whose artistic practice makes active use of printmaking as an important means of expression. The grant is a collaboration between master printer Bill Goldston at Universal Limited Art Editions (ULAE) and the HM Queen Sonja Art Foundation, with the board of the Foundation serving as the jury.
The artists are nominated by the larger academies of art and the printmaking organisations in the Nordic countries and the award is presented every other year.
The QSPA Inspirational Award comprises a 10-day educational stay at ULAE’s renowned printmaking workshop on Long Island, New York, and a cash prize of
NOK 50 000 to cover expenses for travel, food, accommodation and printing materials.
The award was first introduced as the Kjell Nupen Memorial Grant in 2014, in commemoration of the Norwegian artist Kjell Nupen, who passed away earlier that year. The grant was renamed the QSPA Inspirational Award in 2018.
Winners of the QSPA Inspirational Award:
- 2020: Anna Pajak, Sweden
- 2017: Julie Ebbing, Norway
- 2015: Adam Saks, Denmark
Nominees
QSPA Inspirational Award 2020
The jury has assessed 28 candidates of high artistic quality
The Winner 2020

Pajak, Anna "Undreamed - Object", 2020
Etching on Zerkali mould paper, 54 x 37 cm (paper size)
Courtesy of the artist
Nominees 2017
Kjell Nupen Memorial Grant:
Ellen Angus (Sweden/UK), Malou da Cunha Bang (Sweden), Patrik Berg (Norway), Jonas Silversten Bergman (Sweden), Jennifer Bergqvist (Sweden), Timothy Crisp (Sweden), Magnus Dahl (Sweden), Julie Ebbing (Norway), Timothy Eklund (Sweden), Leifur Ýmir Eyjólfsson (Iceland), Ester Fleckner (Denmark), Tova Fransson (Sweden), Sophia I. Gjerding (Denmark), Marija Griniuk (Denmark), Iina Heiskanen (Finland), Inma Herrera (Finland), Salad Hilowle (Sweden/ Somalia), Linda Hærnes (Norway), Holger Højbjerg (Denmark), Nina Knappe (Denmark), Natalia Koziel (Finland), Linus Krantz (Norway), Cathrine Liberg (Norway), Dina Lundvall (Sweden), Per Stian Monsås (Norway), Trond Nesheim (Norway), Jon Erik Nyholm (Denmark), Mari Oseland (Norway), Nína Óskarsdóttir (Iceland), Malin Nyheim Overholt (Norway), Elina Rantasuo (Finland), Johanne Rude Lindegaard (Denmark), Sigurður Atli Sigurðsson (Iceland), Johanne Dybdahl Sigvardsen (Denmark), Laura Vainikka (Denmark), Marie Vedel (Denmark).

Julie Ebbing, Winner of Kjell Nupen Memorial Grant 2017
Photo: Tom Kolstad
QSPA Lifetime Achievement Award
In 2018 the QSPA Lifetime Achievement Award was presented for the first time.
The Award celebrates an artist’s career and lifetime contribution to graphic art and printmaking. It is the QSPA Board that decides on the artist who will receive this honour. The QSPA LIfetime Achievement Award is presented bi-annually.
The first QSPA Lifetime Achievement Award was presented to the British artist David Hockney for his distinguished contribution to fine art printmaking.
Winners of the QSPA Lifetime Achievement Award:
- 2020: Paula Rego
- 2018: David Hockney
QSPA Lifetime Achievement Award
Paula Rego. Award Winner 2020
The Lifetime Achievement Award is a celebration of an artist’s career and lifetime contribution to graphic art and printmaking. The 2020 Award goes to one of Europe’s most influential contemporary figurative artists. She is celebrated for her ambiguous complex compositions in paintings, drawings, and collages, as well as prints. Throughout her career, printmaking has been a space for exploration, and a fundamental part of her artistic oeuvre. Through her technical prowess, the artist has been in dialogue with the particularities of different printing techniques, matching and expanding upon them to interlock with her unique mode of expression.
Paula Rego (b. 1935 in Lisbon, Portugal) explores complex subject matters; psychologically charged depictions of human dramas and narratives. She depicts dysfunctional family relations, political systems, and social structures. Female perspectives are often at the forefront both thematically and compositionally. Novels, poems, nursery rhymes and fairy tales are reinterpreted in her prints, underlined by unconventional compositional devices. Extraordinary lithographs, intaglio- and screen prints are often produced in series. Their themes are many-faceted and detailed, open to the viewers’ interpretations. Paula Rego plays with both the expected and unexpected; disregarding scale and linear time, while at the same time juxtaposing important and less important pictorial elements. Rego’s work can be be viewed in the light of Francisco Goya and William Hogarth, where prints are used as political and social commentary, yet in their execution and exuberance they are highly original and modern.
It is a great honor for the QSPA board to present Paula Rego with the second Lifetime Achievement Award for her distinguished contribution to the art of printmaking through a long and outstanding career.

Rego, Paula "Good Morning" 1988
Etching and aquatint, 36.5 x 45 cm (paper size)
Edition of 50
Courtesy Paula Rego and Cristea Roberts Gallery, London ©️ Paula Rego
David Hockney. Award Winner 2018
The Lifetime Achievement Award is a celebration of an artist’s career and lifetime contribution to graphic art and printmaking. The 2018 Award goes to an artist who has been an important figure on the international art scene for many decades. He is one of the most popular and influential British artists of the 20th century. The winner is not only critically acclaimed as a painter and sophisticated printmaker, but also widely appreciated as a skillful draughtsman, technical innovator, photographer, and stage designer.
David Hockney (b. 1937) made his first prints as a student in 1954 and has since created a large body of exquisite works in traditional printmaking techniques, such as etchings and lithography, as well as experimenting with “homemade” prints; using photocopies and faxes, and computer drawings. Printmaking and the restless investigation of new mediums and different techniques, has for Hockney, been an integral part of his examination and fascination with formal challenges, exploration of the spatial ideas of perspective, and the dialogue between abstraction and the figural. The artist’s technical mastery and lifelong experiments in printmaking has expanded the possibilities and our understanding of this field.
It is a great honour for the QSPA board to present David Hockney with the first Lifetime Achievement Award for his distinguished contribution to the art of printmaking.

Hockney, David, "Rain" from "The Weather Series" 1973
Lithograph and screen print
Edition of 98
39" x 30 1/2"
Courtesy of the artist