Artist Luisa Cunha has won the 2021 edition of the EDP Foundation Art Grand Prize.
The jury was unanimous in the decision to attribute the prize to this artist, highlighting the originality, experimental boldness, multidisciplinary and pioneering nature of the artist’s use of new languages, while also emphasising how influential she has been to younger generations.
When explaining their decision, the jury also underlined the way in which the artist works with space and sound based on verbal language, in a permanent game of constructing and deconstructing meanings.
Luisa Cunha’s work lies outside any generational categorisation, since she has inherited the dematerialisation experiences of international art in the 1970s.
As this is an award given in recognition of her work, it will undoubtedly contribute to lending Luisa Cunha the public visibility that her artistic merit warrants.
This edition’s jury was made up of Benjamin Weil, French art critic and curator, and director of the Modern Art Centre at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation; Philippe Vergne, director of the Serralves Contemporary Art Museum; Teresa Patrício Gouveia, former president of the Serralves Foundation and former member of the board of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation; and Tobi Maier, director of the Lisbon Municipal Galleries. The other members of the jury are Vera Pinto Pereira, president of the EDP Foundation; Miguel Coutinho, member of the board and general director of the EDP Foundation; and José Manuel dos Santos, member of the board and cultural director of the EDP Foundation.
The EDP Foundation Art Grand Prize was created in 2000 for the purpose of recognising visual artists with well-established and historically relevant careers, whose work contributes towards determining and reinforcing Portuguese contemporary aesthetic trends.
As well as a 50-thousand-euro prize, the selected artist is celebrated with a retrospective and/or anthological exhibition, and through the publication of a catalogue to be held as an important historiographic and bibliographic reference.
In its previous editions, the EDP Foundation Art Grand Prize has distinguished great names in contemporary art, such as Lourdes Castro (2000), Mário Cesariny (2002), Álvaro Lapa (2004), Eduardo Batarda (2007), Jorge Molder (2010), Ana Jotta (2013) and Artur Barrio (2016).
