Fondazione Henraux announces 5th International Sculpture Prize

The International Sculpture Prize is intended for artists aged under 40, and is one of the Fondazione’s initiatives geared towards artistic and technological innovation and experimentation, and towards emphasising the legacy of marble in terms of its history and production.

The Prize was launched in 2012, initiated by the Foundation’s president, Paolo Carli, and its objective is to explore the changes and developments in contemporary Italian and international artistic sculpture. Original perspectives and cutting edge approaches to production, alongside the rethinking of marble in material and formal terms within a more sustainable logic, define the criteria of the Prize.

This observation will be facilitated by a new process for the selection of participants, developed by the artistic director of the Henraux Foundation, Edoardo Bonaspetti. A selection committee of seven artistic leaders will each present a project by one artist. The submissions will then be filtered by a five-member jury composed of curators and directors of institutions, who will choose the three winners of the Prize.

The selection committee known as the ‘Altissimo Academy’ – in homage to Monte Altissimo (the ‘Highest Mountain’) in the Apuan Alps – comprises Lorenzo Giusti, director of GAMeC – the Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art, Bergamo; Fatima Hellberg, director of the Bonner Kunstverein, Bonn; João Laia, chief curator of Kiasma – the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki; Luca Lo Pinto, director of MACRO – the Museum of Contemporary Art, Rome; Lucia Pietroiusti, curator and founder of the General Ecology project of the Serpentine Galleries, London; Yasmil Raymond, director of Portikus and rector of the Städelschule, Frankfurt; and Zoé Whitley, director of the Chisenhale Gallery, London.

The jury will be Edoardo Bonaspetti, artistic director of the Henraux Foundation; Vincenzo de Bellis, curator and associate director of programs, visual arts at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Letizia Ragaglia, director of the Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein, Vaduz; Eike Schmidt, director of the Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence; and Roberta Tenconi, curator of Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan.

The announcement of the three winning artists will be made in mid-April 2022. They will then have the opportunity to bring their projects to fruition. The artists will immerse themselves in the various phases and methods of the working of marble, with access to state-of-the-art 3D technologies and the input of artisans.