BERLIN.- The Chilean artist Sandra Vásquez de la Horra, who has lived in Germany since 1995, has been awarded the 2023 Käthe Kollwitz Prize. The jury, consisting of Academy members Ulrike Grossarth, Raimund Kummer and Ulrike Rosenbach, honors Sandra Vásquez de la Horra, an artist whose visual language addresses conflicts that contemporary society around the world has to deal with. Her works bring together archetypes of our collective consciousness, gender issues and sexuality, cross-cultural reflections, and issues of spiritual practice.

The artist, who now lives in Berlin, grew up in a time that – after the military junta putsch in 1973 and Augusto Pinochet came to power – was dominated by torture, kidnappings ( Desaparecidos ) and numerous human rights violations for more than 17 years. Only with the return to democracy in 1990 was the population able to deal with the history of the country again. The history of Chile has shaped Sandra Vásquez de la Horra's artistic work just as much as the examination of her family history, the history and mythologies of the indigenous population and the brutal colonial rule of Europeans in Central and South America.

At the center of Vásquez de la Horras' drawings, sculptures and installations is the human being in his social and societal environment. Her large- and small-format drawings on paper and cardboard thrive on accuracy, compression and color. She dips some of her drawings into a wax bath. This treatment of the material leads to more depth and increases the stability of the paper, resulting in leporello folds and thus spatial objects.

Sandra Vásquez de la Horra , born in 1967 in Viña Del Mar in Chile, studied visual communication in her home town and then at the Düsseldorf Art Academy, first with Jannis Kounellis and later with Rosemarie Trockel free art. In a postgraduate course at the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne, she continued her education in the fields of photography, film and new media. In 1995 she moved to Germany. In 2022 she took part in the 59th Biennale di Venezia. Sandra Vásquez de la Horra will be honored with extensive solo exhibitions in 2024 at the Denver Art Museum and in 2025 at the Haus der Kunst in Munich.

The Academy of Arts will award the prize to Sandra Vásquez de la Horra in June 2024. The exhibition on the occasion of the award will be on display at the Academy of Arts on Hanseatenweg from June to August 2024.

The Käthe Kollwitz Prize, endowed with 12,000 euros, has been awarded annually to visual artists since 1960. Prizewinners in recent years have included Nan Goldin (2022), Maria Eichhorn (2021), Timm Ulrichs (2020), Hito Steyerl (2019), Adrian Piper (2018) and Katharina Sieverding (2017).

The prize, the exhibition and the accompanying publication have been co-financed for 30 years by the Kreissparkasse Köln, sponsor of the Käthe Kollwitz Museum in Cologne.

The Käthe Kollwitz Prize for visual artists was founded by the Akademie der Künste (GDR) under Otto Nagel, then-president and friend of Kollwitz, as a prize bestowed by artists for artists. The aim was, and still is, to honour either an individual work or an oeuvre. Since the first prize was presented, the award has been given both to artists who have made a name for themselves among the art-interested public nationally and internationally, and to those who work in seclusion away from the art scene or the art market.

The Käthe Kollwitz Prize is awarded annually and is always decided by a newly-appointed jury of members of the Fine Arts Section. The prize is endowed with €12,000. To mark the award ceremony, the Akademie der Künste organizes an exhibition and publishes a small catalogue. Since 1992 and the unification of the East and West academies, the Käthe Kollwitz Prize has been co-financed by the Kreissparkasse Köln, as sponsor of the Käthe Kollwitz Museum Cologne.

Born in Königsberg, Käthe Kollwitz (1867-1945) achieved her first great success as an artist at the Great Berlin Art Exhibition in 1898 with the graphic cycle Ein Weberaufstand (“A Weavers' Uprising”) (1893-1897). This series of works was Kollwitz's reaction to a performance of the drama Die Weber (“The Weavers”) by Gerhard Hauptmann in 1893/94, which showed the living conditions of the impoverished weavers in a naturalistic way and made a lasting impression on Kollwitz. This was followed by more participation in exhibitions and membership of the Berlin Secession. Until 1919, Kollwitz concentrated primarily on drawing and prints (Bauerkrieg, Peasants' War, 1902/03-1908, among others), while sculptures followed later. Her relentlessly critical and at the same time emotionally touching depictions of the living conditions of the poor, based on personal experience, can be classified between Expressionism and Realism and remain of international significance.

“I agree that my art has purpose. I want to exert influence in these times when people are so at a loss and in need of help.” -Käthe Kollwitz, Diaries, November 1922