Awarded:
Artist Katharina Fritsch is honored with the Goslar Kaiserring
The Kaiserring has been awarded in Goslar for 50 years. This year, it goes to the Düsseldorf sculptor Katharina Fritsch.
The character of her work - its size, apparent simplicity and painterly quality - lends the artworks a strong aura “that is both direct and yet complex”, according to the jury's statement. The unendowed Goslar Kaiserring is one of the world's most prestigious prizes for modern art. It has been awarded since 1975 and is presented each October. The first winners were Henry Moore, Max Ernst and Alexander Calder. They were followed by pioneers of contemporary art such as Joseph Beuys, Gerhard Richter and Christo.
Born in Essen in 1956, the artist lives in Düsseldorf and Wuppertal. Her sculptures have redefined the concept of sculpture. Her work gained international recognition as early as the 1980s. In 1987, she installed a life-size, yellow plastic version of the Lourdes Madonna in the city center as part of the Münster Sculpture Projects. The simple replica of a saint in yellow triggered a wide range of reactions.
The first version was demolished, but there were also flowers next to the figure. Fritsch's sculptures exist in a strange tension between closeness and distance. Although the motifs are recognizable at first glance, the familiar suddenly becomes alien and takes on a disturbing aspect. What lends the works this ambiguity is not least the minimalist concentration of the form process and the monochrome color scheme. Amazement and horror lie close together. Works such as Rattenkönig (Rat King, 1991–93) have an extreme clarity, yet cannot be fully deciphered. Typical of all the sculptures is the oscillation between extreme artificiality and extreme naturalness. In 1995, the artist demonstrated her vision of art with her museum for the Venice Biennale: a distant pavilion surrounded by 200 stylized trees like a hedge from Sleeping Beauty. A stronghold against today's cultural mass culture. In 2013, Katharina Fritsch commented on the gray heroes on the neighboring pedestals with their masculine posturing with a blue rooster in London's Trafalgar Square.
To mark the award, the Mönchehaus Museum Goslar is dedicating a solo exhibition to the artist from October 11, 2025, to January 18, 2026.