BARCELONA.- The jury has awarded the 2009 Joan Miró Prize to the Swiss artist Pipilotti Rist for her wide-ranging creative activity and her outstanding contribution to the current artistic scene.

The Joan Miró Prize, organised by the Joan Miró Foundation in Barcelona and sponsored by the Fundació Caixa Girona, consists of €70,000, one of the largest art prizes in existence, and is awarded every two years. The first Joan Miró Prize was won in 2007 by Olafur Eliasson.

This year’s award ceremony took place in the Auditorium at the Joan Miró Foundation on 4 May. It was attended by the jury and the team supporting the winning artist, who was unable to be present due to illness. During the course of the evening, Joan Punyet Miró, grandson of Joan Miró, presented the trophy to Davide Legittimo, of Atelier Rist, who thanked him on behalf of Pipilotti Rist.

The members of the jury for the 2009 Joan Miró Prize were Ida Gianelli, president of Azienda Speciale Palaexpo; Alfred Pacquement, director of the Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou; Vicent Todolí, director of Tate Modern; Poul Erik Tøjner, director of the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art; Rosa Maria Malet, Director of the Fundació Joan Miró; and Arcadi Calzada, president of the Fundació Caixa Girona.

The jury decided unanimously to award the 2009 Joan Miró Prize to Pipilotti Rist because “Over the last twenty years, Pipilotti Rist has never ceased to surprise and provoke us with her artistic explorations that take us through mental and aesthetic landscapes, while penetrating into the deepest strata of the personal conscious and the collective conscious, often straddling them both in a way that is both forceful and elusive.”

On being informed of the jury’s decision, the video artist declared: “When I saw the breathtaking exhibition [...] at MoMA in NY […] last November it became clear to me how important Miró was for all us coming after him. It is really a special honour to get a prize with his appreciated name. I’m thankful to him and many artists before me who didn’t give up and shaped and enlarged my view to the world. […] I go on to be proud, passionate and friendly. I dedicate this prize to all the people who take care of others for free, to all the good teachers and to the people who give smiles to strangers on the street and in the trains”

Pipilotti Rist will be presenting an exhibition at the Fundació Joan Miró in Barcelona and another at the Centre Cultural Caixa Girona – Fontana d’Or in Girona. Both exhibitions are sponsored by the Fundació Caixa Girona.