Loth Sculpture Area Prize – Sponsored by the L-Bank
Sculpture has traditionally played an important role at art karlsruhe. The sculpture:squares, ten by ten metre zones dedicated exclusively to three-dimensional art, bring space-defining situations into the high, light-flooded halls and create places of contemplation between the exhibition booths.
The Loth Sculpture Prize - sponsored by L-Bank - has been awarded at art karlsruhe since 2018.
The Loth Sculpture Prize was founded in 2018 to honour the commitment of the gallery owners and sculptors who bring these sculptures to Karlsruhe every year. The prize is named after the Karlsruhe academy professor Wilhelm Loth (1920 to 1993). An expert jury assessed all the installations - and has made some impressive choices in recent years.
‘This year, we were really amazed at how the sculpture squares have developed,’ says Alexander Heil. ‘They have reached an unimagined quality - really top!’
The fact that the Loth Sculpture Prize always attracts a lot of attention is undoubtedly also due to the fact that it appears to be handsomely endowed. The L-Bank is once again providing 20,000 euros in prize money, which benefits both the artist and the gallery owner.
Laureate 2025: Galerie Martina Kaiser and artist Eva Hild
The prize is awarded equally to the gallery and the artist. The winners of the seventh Loth Sculpture Prize are the gallery Martina Kaiser (Köln) and artist Eva Hild.
The prize was awarded by a jury of experts who justified their judgement as follows: ‘Based on astonishing craftsmanship, Eva Hild's sculptures are tangibly charged with energy and meaning, soul and physicality. The surfaces of matt, white or black pigments, which only appear monochrome at first glance, seem creatively alive depending on the incidence of light. Together with the Swedish artist, her Cologne gallery owner Martina Kaiser has created a harmonious sculpture space that is both museum-like and exciting.’
Eva Hild's sculptures are an interplay of form and omission, content and emptiness, inner and outer space. The objects are supported by a very fine ceramic membrane that grows into somatic shapes in curves, loops and twists. They radiate a natural dynamism, changing their shape with every change in the viewer's perspective and allowing the dimensions of inside and outside to merge. Clay, which serves as the starting material for her ceramic works, is the perfect working material for Eva Hild. ‘Clay is patient, modest and grateful - and has a tradition in art and craftsmanship that goes back thousands of years for good reason,’ says Eva Hild. The artist lives and works near Gothenburg in Sweden. She studied at the Academy of Art and Design in Gothenburg and at Gerlesborg Art School. Her work has been honoured with numerous prizes and awards, including the Barnett and Annalee Newman Foundation Grant Award and the Prince Eugene Medal for Outstanding Artistic Achievement, one of Sweden's highest honours.
The eponym Wilhelm Loth
The Loth Sculpture Area Prize is named after the artist Wilhelm Loth (1920-1993). Loth accepted an invitation in 1958 to teach a sculpture class at the art academy in Karlsruhe, where he served as a professor from 1960 until his retirement in 1986. Sculptures were always the focus of Wilhelm Loth’s artistic creativity. He utilized bronze, nickel silver and aluminium as materials. The depiction of the female body is the central artistic aspect about which his oeuvre revolved.
The Expert Jury 2025
- Alexander Heil , Nachlassverwaltung Wilhelm Loth, Karlsruhe
- Dr. Sebastian Baden, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt
- Madeleine Dietz, Sculptor
- Dr. Silvie Aigner, Editor-in-Chief PARNASS, das Kunstmagazin
Previous prize winners
- 2024 Andreas Blank, Galerie Art Affair, Regensburg
- 2023 Klaus Münch, Galerie Albert Baumgarten, Freiburg
- 2022 Stefan Rohrer, Galerie Scheffel, Bad Homburg
- 2020 Gary Schlingheider, galerie burster, Berlin/Karlsruhe
- 2019 Jörg Bach, Galerie Wohlhüter, Leibertingen-Thalheim
- 2018 Joana Vasconcelos, Galerie Scheffel, Bad Homburg