Maurizio Cattelan Awarded the Preis der Nationalgalerie 2026

The Preis der Nationalgalerie 2026 is being awarded to the Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan. The prize honors one of the most influential contemporary artists, who will be represented with his first solo exhibition in Germany. His works, which move between sculpture, installation, and conceptual practice, are characterized by sharp humor, bitter seriousness, and a profound reflection on social structures. The exhibition for the Preis der Nationalgalerie will open at the Neue Nationalgalerie during Berlin Art Week in September 2026.

Since the early 1990s, Maurizio Cattelan (b. 1960, Padua) has been one of the defining voices in international art. His iconic works—including *La Nona Ora* (1999), a figure of Pope John Paul II struck by a meteorite; *Him* (2001), a praying schoolboy with the face of Adolf Hitler; or *Untitled* (2003), an animatronic sculpture referencing the protagonist of Günter Grass's novel *The Tin Drum*—demonstrate how Cattelan utilizes the potential of shock, irritation, and moral ambivalence to raise central questions of our time: about guilt, responsibility, power, and collective trauma. Cattelan's artistic practice is permeated by an aesthetic of "comic existentialism"—a combination of humor and tragedy, irony and profundity that makes his works appear both accessible and abyssal. With this exhibition, Maurizio Cattelan returns to Berlin, where he co-curated the 4th Berlin Biennale in 2006.

The expert jury for the Preis der Nationalgalerie 2026 is composed of the international museum directors Emma Lavigne (Director of the Pinault Collection, Paris), Sam Keller (Director of the Fondation Beyeler, Basel), and Klaus Biesenbach (Director of the Neue Nationalgalerie). In addition to the expert jurors, the curators of the Nationalgalerie and the members of the FREUNDE der Nationalgalerie were entitled to make nominations.