The Praemium Imperiale honors artists in five disciplines: painting, sculpture, theater-cinema, music and architecture. It was created in 1988 by the Japan Art Association.
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American director Bob Wilson is one of the winners of the 34th Praemium Imperiale, considered the “Nobel of the arts” and who this year also rewards his compatriots, the trumpeter Wynton Marsalis and the painter Vija Celmins. The Danish sculptor Olafur Eliasson and the German-Burkinabe architect Diébédo Francis Kéré are also among the winners, according to the list announced Tuesday in Paris at the Bibliothèque nationale de France and simultaneously in London and Berlin.
The Praemium Imperiale honors artists in five disciplines – painting, sculpture, theater-cinema, music and architecture. It was created in 1988 by the Japan Art Association and grants each winner the sum of 15 million yen (around 96,000 euros today). The award ceremony by Prince Hitachi, uncle of Emperor Naruhito of Japan, will take place on October 18 in Tokyo.
The laureats
Robert alias Bob Wilson, born in 1941 in Waco in the United States, is the author of some of the most significant theater productions of recent decades. In France, where he launched his career in the early 1970s, he notably created the inauguration show for the Opéra Bastille in Paris in 1989. Wynton Marsalis, born in 1961 in New Orleans (United States) in a family of musicians from father to son, is recognized as an exceptional jazz trumpeter, awarded numerous times, and very invested in musical education.
Vija Celmins, born in Riga, Latvia in 1938 and emigrated to the United States ten years later, is known for her extremely detailed paintings and drawings of the natural world and the sea in particular. It is exhibited notably at the MoMa in New York and at the Tate Modern in London. Olafur Eliasson, born in 1967 in Copenhagen, Denmark and established in Berlin, is a sculptor who spent his childhood in Iceland very involved in the environmental issues that form the basis of his work. One of his works is in the spotlight at the Vuitton Foundation in Paris.
Pritzker Prize 2022, the highest distinction in his field, the architect Diébédo Francis Kéré, born in 1965 in Gando in Burkina Faso, also established himself in Germany. Its constructions combine traditional materials and modern design.