BERNAU IM SCHWARZWALD.- The Federal State of Baden-Württemberg (Germany) has bestowed the 2011 Hans Thoma Award, the Grand State Prize for Fine Arts, to the Berlin-based artist Karin Sander. The jury honoured Karin Sander for her outstanding oeuvre of sculptures, installations and spatial interventions. The award ceremony took place on 14 August at the Hans-Thoma-Kunstmuseum in Bernau. The solo exhibition on that occasion runs from 16 August to 18 September, 2011.

The Hans Thoma Award, named after the painter Hans Thoma (1839-1924), was founded in 1949 by the State of Baden-Württemberg to pay tribute to new developments in contemporary art. The prize is endowed with 25.000 EUR and awarded every second year to an artist born or living in Baden-Württemberg for an outstanding life's work and achieving international recognition. The prize is connected with an exhibition and a monographic publication. Previous award winners include Otto Dix, Anselm Kiefer, K.R.H. Sonderborg, Thomas Ruff, Silvia Bächli and, in 2009, Tobias Rehberger.

Karin Sander's work is extraordinarily varied. She has pioneered art practices incorporating high-tech innovations, such as her 3-D bodyscan series of living persons. Her conceptual approach and her examinations of spatial situations as well as historical and social systems are distinguished by lightness, subtlety, intellectual precision and meticulous execution.

Her work has been shown at museums and public spaces worldwide, including Kunstsammlung NRW, Düsseldorf, 2010/2011 (GER); Sculpture. Projects in Muenster 2007 (GER); Istanbul Biennial, 1994 (TR), The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1994 and San Francisco, 2001 (USA).

The solo exhibition at the Hans-Thoma-Kunstmuseum is organized by the Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden. A catalogue is published by the Verlag für moderne Kunst Nürnberg, in cooperation with Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden and Kunstmuseum St. Gallen.