ZURICH.- The Board of the Roswitha Haftmann Foundation has decided to award the Roswitha Haftmann Prize 2019, which is endowed with CHF 150,000, to the Austrian artist VALIE EXPORT (b. 1940). The film-maker, media and performance artist, who has used her professional name as her artistic concept and logo since 1967, receives the award in recognition of her life’s work. In the Board’s view, she is one of the most important international pioneers in these genres. Her body action ‘Tap and Touch Cinema’, in which passers-by touched her exposed breasts within a cardboard box, caused a scandal that was documented in film and photographs and has, the jury notes, become part of the founding myth of ‘Actionism’ whose legacy endures to this day.

VALIE EXPORT took part in documenta 6 in 1977 and documenta 12 in 2007 in Kassel, and in 1980 represented Austria at the Venice Biennale along with fellow Haftmann Prize winner Maria Lassnig. She has held professorships at universities of the arts in Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Berlin and Cologne and is still represented in many international exhibitions. She lives and works in Vienna.

FOUNDATION, PRESENTATION AT THE KUNSTHAUS ZÜRICH
VALIE EXPORT is the nineteenth artist to be honoured with Europe’s best endowed award for art. She will receive the Roswitha Haftmann Prize on 27 September 2019 before an audience of invited guests at the Kunsthaus Zürich.

The Prize was originally the initiative of Roswitha Haftmann (1924–1998), whose Foundation has awarded it since 2001 to a living artist who has created an oeuvre of outstanding quality. The winner is chosen by the Foundation Board, which includes the directors of the Kunstmuseum Bern, the Kunstmuseum Basel, the Museum Ludwig in Cologne and the Kunsthaus Zürich as well as other members co-opted by the Board.