Cecilia Vicuña receives the Roswitha Haftmann Prize 2025

With this decision, the Foundation Board honors a body of work that has, for decades, combined artistic radicality with poetic force and political engagement. Vicuña is the 23rd recipient of Europe’s most highly endowed art prize. Previous laureates include Maria Lassnig, Robert Frank, Cindy Sherman, VALIE EXPORT, Cildo Meireles, Zarina Bhimji, Robert Ryman, and Walter De Maria.

Cecilia Vicuña (*1948, Santiago de Chile) is one of Latin America’s most influential artists. Her practice spans painting, poetry, installation, performance, film, and activism – always with a clear focus on social justice, Indigenous cultures, ecological concerns, and the transformative power of language. She is internationally recognized for her large-scale installations made of raw materials such as wool, threads, or found objects – fragile yet powerful works that touch both collective memory and personal remembrance.

Since the 1960s, Vicuña has combined artistic creation with political action. Exiled after the Chilean military coup in 1973, she consistently developed her approach further: interdisciplinary, feminist, and anti-colonial. Her oeuvre is a passionate plea for poetry as a way of life.

After studying in London, the artist emigrated to Colombia in 1975, at that time one of the few countries in South America without a military dictatorship. She spent several years in Bogotá, where she produced the film ‘What Is Poetry to You?’ (1980). In it, she asks passers-by, children, sex workers, police officers, poets and a biology professor the seemingly simple question, ‘What is poetry to you?’ The spontaneous answers offer a multi-layered insight into the dreams, concerns and hopes of people in this particular context. The result is a kind of portrait of a collective consciousness in which poetry can be experienced as an emotional and social force.

This year’s laudatory speech will be delivered by Dr. Yilmaz Dziewior, Director of the Museum Ludwig in Cologne and member of the Foundation Board. He emphasizes: ‘I am truly delighted that we are honoring Cecilia Vicuña, an artist whose work possesses great visual power while addressing highly topical issues. Over the past decades, she has engaged intensively with the role of women in society, both in Latin America and more broadly. Equally urgently, she draws attention to the economic and ecological exploitation of our planet and repeatedly intervenes in current debates. There are very few artists who manage to do this with such poetic and enduring consistency as Cecilia Vicuña.’

For many years, Vicuña’s work remained under the radar of the established art market – today it is being received with ever greater intensity. After her widely acclaimed participation in documenta 14 (2017), solo exhibitions followed at the Tate Modern in London, the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Santiago de Chile, and in 2025 at the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin. In 2022, she was awarded the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice Biennale. Her works are held in major collections including the Tate London, the MoMA, New York, the Museo Reina Sofía, the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.