VIA WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
The board of the Roswitha Haftmann Foundation has named Austrianartist Heimo Zobernig the winner of the 2016 Roswitha Haftmann Prize “in recognition of his sustained and diverse production and compelling body of work,” according to a press release. The prize, known as Europe’s best-endowed award, gives a selected artist 150,000 Swiss Francs (about $146,600). Last year, the award, which is given every one to three years, was presented to Lawrence Weiner.
Zobernig, who is represented by Petzel Gallery in New York, has been working in sculpture, painting, video, and performance since the 1980s, and is perhaps most famous for his Mondrian- and Blinky Palermo-inspired grid and diamond paintings, as well as his series of monochrome paintings, riffing on Constructivism and De Stijl movement, among other 20th-century modernist movements. Zobernig has served as a professor of sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna since 2000 and shows in the the Austrian pavilion at this year’s Venice Biennale.