The 2026 Preis der Nationalgalerie (Prize of the National Gallery) will be awarded to Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan.
The prize honours one of the most influential contemporary artists, who will be represented in Germany for the first time with a solo exhibition. His works, which range from sculpture and installation to conceptual practice, are characterised by sharp humour, bitter seriousness and a profound reflection on social structures. The exhibition accompanying the Preis der Nationalgalerie will open at the Neue Nationalgalerie during Berlin Art Week in September 2026.
Since the early 1990s, Maurizio Cattelan (born 1960 in Padua) has been one of the defining voices in international art. His iconic works — including La Nona Ora (1999), a figure of Pope John Paul II struck by a meteorite, Him (2001), a praying schoolboy with the face of Adolf Hitler, and Untitled (2003), an animatronic sculpture based on the protagonist of Günter Grass’s The Tin Drum — show how Cattelan uses shock, irritation and moral ambivalence to raise central questions of our time: guilt, responsibility, power and collective trauma. Cattelan's artistic practice is permeated by an aesthetic of ‘comic existentialism’ — a combination of humour and tragedy, irony and profundity that makes his works appear both accessible and enigmatic. With this exhibition, Maurizio Cattelan returns to Berlin, where he co-curated the 4th Berlin Biennale in 2006.
The expert jury for the Preis der Nationalgalerie 2026 is made up of outstanding international directors: Emma Lavigne (Director of the Pinault Collection, Paris) and Sam Keller (Director of the Fondation Beyeler, Basel) as well as Klaus Biesenbach (Director of the Neue Nationalgalerie). In addition to the expert jurors, the curators of the Nationalgalerie and the members of the FREUNDE der Nationalgalerie (FRIENDS of the National Gallery) were also eligible to submit nominations.
Nearly two decades ago, as co-curator of the 4th Berlin Biennale, Maurizio Cattelan played a decisive role in establishing Berlin’s international standing as a centre of contemporary art.
Twenty years on, a solo exhibition at the Neue Nationalgalerie offers an opportunity to revisit and reflect on this formative influence within a new social and cultural context.
Cattelan’s practice engages enduring themes such as power, religion, death, humour and memory — concerns that resonate with particular force in Berlin, a city profoundly shaped by its complex history. As an Italian artist with an international career, he brings a distinctly European perspective to questions of identity, responsibility and collective remembrance. His works invite us to confront history in ways that are simultaneously provocative, critical and poetic.
In Germany, where forms of remembrance are currently being re-examined — between the last generations with direct connections to the NS era and a younger generation informed by global perspectives — Cattelan’s art acquires renewed significance. His iconic gestures, oscillating between exaggeration, irony and pain, challenge the rituals of commemoration, evoke both history and its narratives, and open new vantage points on contemporary social debates. In a time of increasing political polarization, his art can encourage us to view remembrance not as compulsion or obligation, but as a vital and relevant engagement with the present and the future.
Cattelan’s ironic questioning of authority and “truth” also carries particular urgency today. At a moment when institutions — museums, politics and the media — are re-evaluating their credibility and social roles, he scrutinizes structures of power both within and beyond the art world, always without a moralizing tone. His works provoke reflection on personal responsibility, historical representation and the limits of institutional critique and authority. In an atmosphere of political and social hardening, Cattelan’s subversive humour acts as a liberating force. He reminds us that provocation and wit are not expressions of cynicism but forms of resistance and constructive reflection. Particularly in the German context, where public discourse often carries a strong moral charge, his art opens up spaces for thought beyond outrage and polarization. Cattelan is not an artist of straightforwardness. His strength lies in embracing ambiguity, exposing contradictions and posing new questions. This willingness to inhabit the in-between generates productive tension and reminds us that ambiguity is not a weakness, but a precondition for critical awareness.
The Neue Nationalgalerie, with its iconic building by Mies van der Rohe, is ideally suited as a place situated between modernity, the 20th and 21nd centuries, and the present day, to showcase Cattelan's work in all its complexity — as a mirror and commentary on our time.
Emma Lavigne, Sam Keller, Klaus Biesenbach
Main Image: Maurizio Cattelan, Neue Nationalgalerie, 2025 © Peter Rigaud