The internationally celebrated artist Anselm Kiefer has been awarded The Queen Sonja Lifetime Achievement Award, the world’s most important prize for printmaking. He will be presented with the Award by Her Majesty Queen Sonja at an Award Ceremony which will be held in Bodø, European City of Culture 2024 on 5 & 6 June 2024. He joins past winners of the Award: David Hockney (2018), Paula Rego (2020) and William Kentridge (2022).
The QSPA Lifetime Achievement Award is a celebration of an artist’s career and lifetime contribution to graphic art and printmaking. Anselm Kiefer is an artist whose pioneering and unique use of woodcuts has played a central role in his work. He incorporates woodcuts into paintings, collages them together to create works that rival the grand scale of his paintings, and uses them in his many artist’s books.
HM Queen Sonja said: “It is a great honour for the QSPA board to present Anselm Kiefer with the Lifetime Achievement Award for his distinguished contribution to the art of printmaking through a long and outstanding career.”
The Queen Sonja Art Foundation will announce two other awards in April: The Queen Sonja Print Award 2024, presented to an outstanding, often young artist who has excelled in the field of printmaking, and The QSPA Inspirational Award for an emerging Nordic artist.
HM Queen Sonja of Norway is herself an accomplished artist and a highly regarded printmaker. A passionate believer in the importance of art in everyone’s lives, a key aim of the Award is to make art accessible to all.
Trude Gomnæs Ugelstad, Director for the Queen Sonja Print Award Foundation, said: "Anselm Kiefer is a worthy winner of Queen Sonja Lifetime Achievement Award. We are excited that he will be attending the Award Ceremony and Seminar in Bodø in June."