Amir Nave winner of the 17th Drawing Prize

Amir Nave winner of the 17th Drawing Prize of the Daniel & Florence Guerlain Foundation.

Three artists from the international outsider scene were competing for the 17th edition of the Drawing Prize: Lamia Joreige Lebanese artist born in 1972, Amir Nave Israeli artist born in 1974 and Christos Venetis Greek artist born in 1967.

Assembled in Paris on March 21 2024, the jury has awarded the 2024 Drawing Prize to Amir Nave.

The awards ceremony took place the same day at the Salon du Dessin. The winner receives a prize of 15,000 EUR, while the other two artists each receive an endowment of 5,000 EUR. A work by the winner will be offered by the Daniel & Florence Guerlain Foundation to the Department of Prints and Drawings of the National Museum of Modern Art located within the Centre Pompidou.

Amir Nave is a self-taught artist whose works are part of the collections of the Israel Museum (Jerusalem), the Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art, the Ashdod Museum of Art, the Mishkan Art Museum, the Artis Foundation (Israel/New York), Tank Shanghai (China) and Florence and Daniel Guerlain. He is represented by Galerie In Situ-Fabienne Leclerc (Paris), Chelouch Contemporary Art Gallery (Israel) and Shin Gallery (New York).

Considered in an infinite temporality, the human being is worked by Amir Nave in an obsessive, spiritual, or even almost mystical manner. He is endlessly wondering who we are and where we are going. By following the movement of Nave’s figures or “creatures,” the viewer embraces some of the human passions. If certain works even seem to play on classics of art history and mythology, Nave nonetheless refutes the idea of a representation of everyday life supposed to help us better understand who we are. In his early career, he took an interest in landscapes and insects, searching for parallels between our species and theirs. His forms then evolved into “creatures”, drawing on deeply buried pasts as well as possible futures. Sometimes depicted as a body, a head or an entity, they are alive and active. “The human being is unfathomable and, within each of us, this question of eternity resides,” he says. “In my work, I try to grasp what these characters are doing and where they are heading.” Faced with these philosophical and metaphysical questions, the artist reminds us that the fact of living in Israel, and more generally in the Middle East, has long induced a sort of tension. (Extracts from texts by Marie Maertens.)

About the Daniel & Florence Guerlain Foundation’s Drawing Prize
This prize is reserved for French and foreign artists, residing in France or not, but who sustain a privileged cultural link with France, and for whom drawing constitutes a significant part of their work.

Awarded for the first time in 2007 and biennial until 2009, the Prize honours artists who make any unique work on paper, using graphic means: crayon, charcoal, red chalk, ink, wash tint, gouache, watercolour, pastels and felt… including collages and wall drawings but excluding computer and mechanical processes.

The candidates are selected by a committee composed of the two founders, Daniel and Florence Guerlain, and of 4 members chosen for their competence in contemporary art. Following a working meeting with the artists, visits to studios and analysis, the committee selects three artists whose work is presented to a jury that changes with each prize and chooses the winner.

2024 jury: Harry Tappan Heher (American), Burkhard Heyl (German), Damiana Leoni (Italian), Claudina Trapani Paauw (Dutch), Gérard Boulois, Patricia Dupin, Philippe Lhotte, Florence & Daniel Guerlain (French).

The prize receives the support of the Daniel & Florence Guerlain Foundation’s Cercle des Amis, la Maison Guerlain, la banque Neuflize OBC, Artcurial, Artprice by ArtMarket.com, Voisin Consulting Life Sciences, le Groupe Élysées Monceau, le Groupe Pasteur Mutualité, PatrimOne assurances, Arte Generali, le Salon du Dessin, la Maison Ruinart.

Past winners : Silvia Bächli, Switzerland (2007), Sandra Vásquez de la Horra, Chile (2009), Catharina Van Eetvelde, Belgium (2010), Marcel Van Eeden, Netherlands (2011), Jorinde Voigt, Germany (2012), Susan Hefuna, Germany (2013), Tomasz Kowalski, Poland (2014), Jockum Nordström, Sweden (2015), Cameron Jamie, United States (2016), Ciprian Muresan, Romania (2017), Mamma Andersson, Sweden (2018), Claire Morgan, Irland (2019), Juan Uslé, Spain (2020), Françoise Pétrovitch, Fance (2021), Olga Chernysheva, Russia (2022), Pascal Leyder, Belgium (2023).

Contact: Daniel & Florence Guerlain Contemporary Art Foundation, T +33 (0)6 44 13 99 14, fdg2 [​at​] wanadoo.fr.