Loth Sculpture Area Prize – Sponsored by the L-Bank
The Loth Sculpture Area Prize – Sponsored by the L-Bank was awarded for the first time at art KARLSRUHE in 2018. Its winner was the most outstanding presentation among the twenty Sculpture Areas.
A jury of experts confers the award, which is endowed with 20,000 euros in prize money. The Sculpture Areas, which can be seen each year in the four halls at the fair, number among the unmistakable special features of this art fair in south-western Germany. The prize honours not only the sculptor, but also the gallery owner who shoulders the great efforts necessary to provide a staging at the fair for artworks that are often in large formats and not seldom extremely heavy.
Laureate 2023: Galerie Albert Baumgarten and artist Klaus Münch
The prize is awarded equally to the gallery and the artist. The winners of the fifth Loth Sculpture Area Prize are gallery owner Albert Baumgarten (Galerie Albert Baumgarten, Freiburg) and artist Klaus Münch.
The prize was awarded by a jury of experts who justified their judgement as follows: "When objects occupy a sculpture space, their radiance captivating from afar, it arouses curiosity. Individual Plexiglas sculptures, independent of each other, combine in their formal diversity to form a variable work of art and appear anew again and again, depending on the quality of the light, the conditions of the room or the time of day. One suspects mysterious messages in the deliberately restrained silkscreen prints on the object surfaces. These are highly magnified cell preparations from research. In this way, the artist links nature with culture and opens up scope for the viewer to think and make his own associations," says jury chairman Alexander Heil, explaining the verdict.
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 2023
- Dr. Pia Dornacher, director of Museum Lothar Fischer, Neumarkt / Opf,
- Alexander Heil , executor of Wilhelm Loth’s estate, Karlsruhe
- Prof. Erwin Gross, Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste, Karlsruhe
- Dr. Sebastian Baden, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt
Previous prize winners
- 2022 Stefan Rohrer, Galerie Scheffel
- 2020 Gary Schlingheider, galerie burster
- 2019 Jörg Bach, Galerie Wohlhüter, Leibertingen-Thalheim
- 2018 Joana Vasconcelos, Galerie Scheffel, Bad Homburg