The Prize – launched in 2012 at the behest of the Foundation’s president, Paolo Carli – embodies the time-honored values of the Henraux company, encapsulated by important collaborations with numerous leading lights of modern and contemporary art. The experience of Erminio Cidonio, Henraux’s general manager from 1954 to 1971, remains emblematic: from the early 1960s onwards, Erminio invited the most influential sculptors of the time to the company’s headquarters in Querceta di Seravezza (Lucca), in the Versilia region of Tuscany.
In light of this heritage, the objective of the Henraux International Sculpture Prize is to explore the changes and developments in contemporary Italian and international artistic sculpture. Original perspectives and cutting-edge approaches to production, alongside the rethinking of marble in material and formal terms within a more sustainable logic, define the criteria of the Prize.
This observation will be facilitated by a new process for the selection of participants, developed by the artistic director of the Henraux Foundation, Edoardo Bonaspetti. Seven leading exponents on the art scene – who have made their names through the course of their careers in their chosen fields of study – will constitute the selection committee and will each present a project by one artist. The submissions will then be filtered by a five-member jury composed of renowned curators and directors of institutions, who will choose the three winners of the Prize.
The selection committee known as the “Altissimo Academy” – in homage to Monte Altissimo (the “Highest Mountain”) in the Apuan Alps, of which Michelangelo discovered the precious marble and which today is the site of the Henraux quarries – is composed of Lorenzo Giusti, director of GAMeC – the Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art, Bergamo; Fatima Hellberg, director of the Bonner Kunstverein, Bonn; João Laia, chief curator of Kiasma – the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki, Luca Lo Pinto, director of MACRO – the Museum of Contemporary Art, Rome, Lucia Pietroiusti, curator and founder of the General Ecology project of the Serpentine Galleries, London, Yasmil Raymond, director of Portikus and rector of the Städelschule, Frankfurt, and Zoé Whitley, director of the Chisenhale Gallery, London.
For its part, the jury will be constituted by Edoardo Bonaspetti, artistic director of the Henraux Foundation, Vincenzo de Bellis, curator and associate director of programs, visual arts at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Letizia Ragaglia, director of the Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein, Vaduz, Eike Schmidt, director of the Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence; and Roberta Tenconi, curator of Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan.
The announcement of the three winning artists will be made in mid-April 2022, and over the course of subsequent months, they will have the opportunity to bring their projects to fruition in close collaboration with Henraux’s production departments. The artists will, then, be given the chance to immerse themselves in the various phases and methods of the working of marble, with access to state-of-the-art 3D technologies and the input of exceptionally gifted artisans.
The works – produced with the full support of Henraux in two editions, of which one will be donated to the artist and the other acquired by the corporate collection – will be presented to the public Saturday, July 23, 2022 at the company’s longstanding headquarters in Querceta. In conjunction with the International Sculpture Prize, the exhibition showcasing the Henraux Collection in the 1960s will also be inaugurated, in a unique context combining the expression of contemporary creativity through digital technologies with the transmission of values and master craftsmanship stretching back more than two hundred years.
