Maria Anto and Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven Art Prize
award ceremony of the 2nd Edition

  • Maria Anto and Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven Art Prize

Place of Art Foundation and the Committee of the Art Prize invite to an award ceremony of the 2nd Edition of Maria Anto and Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven Art Prize which will take place on December 15 at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Panska 3 seat.

The prize is awarded in three categories:

  • Award for distinction for courage, overcoming and crossing borders for a Young Polish Artist,
  • Award for outstanding achievements and artistic approach for a Polish Artist,
  • Honorary prize for outstanding achievements and artistic approach for a Foreign Artist.

The Maria Anto & Elsa von Freytag Art Prize was founded by the Foundation Place of Art (Fundacja Miejsce Sztuki) during the retrospective exhibition of Maria Anto’s in Zachęta National Gallery (November 2017 - February 2018) and on the day of the Panel of Painters (Panel Malarek), organized at the end of the exhibition and it aims to support and appreciate outstanding achievements in the field of contemporary art and the visual arts. In 2018 the prize was awarded to Adelina Cimochowicz, Katarzyna Górna i Carolee Schneemann.

The day of the award - December 15 each year - is symbolically shared with the two ‘Matrons’: Maria Anto was born on December 15, 1936 and Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven died on December 15, 1927.

Maria Anto

(15.12.1936 – 10.04.2007) - born in Warsaw, the Polish painter lived and created in Żoliborz, Warsaw. Her paintings set in the tradition of surrealism and magical realism were overcome with imagination and her own iconography of personal experiences. At the turn of 2017 and 2018 of the Zachęta Gallery in Warsaw, the first extensive posthumous retrospective exhibition of her painting took place.

Elsa Hildegard Baroness von Freytag-Loringhoven

(12. 07.1874 - 15.12.1927) - born in Świnoujście, German-American artist, poet, art representative DADA lived and created in Germany and the USA, she was the forerunner of modern sculpture asamblage, installation, performance, collage and readymade. It is believed that she was the first to introduce a urinal in an art exhibition. Her sculptures are compositions of hydraulic elements and pipes as well as other "non-artistic" materials that break the thinking about modern sculpture. Her provocative poetry was published posthumously in 2011 in Body Sweats: The Uncensored Writings of Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven. The New York Times praised the book as one of the notable art books of 2011.

  • Aneta Szyłak (The Commissioner of NOMUS New Art Museum, branch of the National Museum in Gdańsk);
  • Hanna Wróblewska (Director Zachęta – National Gallery of Art, Warsaw);
  • Marika Kuźmicz (lecturer at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, President of Arton Foundation);
  • Katarzyna Kasia (Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Visual Culture Management at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw);
  • Michał Jachuła (curator of the Maria Anto exhibition at Zachęta – National Gallery of Art, Warsaw);
  • Paulina Ołowska (visual artist);
  • Katarzyna Górna (visual artist and Laureate of the Art Prize in 2018);
  • Zuzanna Janin (visual artist and Maria Anto’s daughter, President of Place of Art Foundation).
  • Honorary member of the committee: Roman Cieślak (the family of the artist Maria Anto).