BASEL.- On the recommendation of the Federal Art Commission, the Federal Office of Culture is this year presenting the Swiss Grand Award for Art/Prix Meret Oppenheim to Felix Lehner, Pamela Rosenkranz and Miroslav Šik. The award ceremony will take place on 16 June, the day of the opening of the Swiss Art Awards exhibition in Basel and will be attended by Federal Councillor Elisabeth Baume-Schneider.

Felix Lehner – art caster and creative partner

Felix Lehner (b.1960, St. Gallen) opened his first foundry at the age of 22. In 1994, it relocated to the halls of the former dyeing factory in Sittertal. Today, the Kunstgiesserei St. Gallen employs over 80 specialists in a wide range of creative professions. Since it was established, the foundry has become a cornerstone of the Swiss art scene, collaborating with internationally-renowned artists, and with museums and galleries all over the world.

Lehner has employed passion and dedication to turn the Kunstgiesserei into a production site and material research location. It is a place where expertise is cultivated and customised technical processes are developed, from the most high tech to the most artisanal, with and for artists. For over 40 years, Felix Lehner and his teams have been supporting artists at every stage of the creative process. In 2006, Lehner co-founded the Sitterwerk Foundation, a public centre dedicated to art and artistic production, comprising a reference library, a materials archive, and workshops with accommodation for visiting artists. A branch of the foundry employing 15 people was set up in Shanghai in 2012.

Pamela Rosenkranz – artist between flesh and world

Pamela Rosenkranz (b.1979, Altdorf) is a graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Bern and studied at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam from 2010 to 2012. Her multidisciplinary work mainly comprises installation art, sculpture, ready-made and painting. Her unique artistic œuvre, which is conceptually authentic and innovative, has an international reach. She is known for using synthetic materials to produce an idealised nature. Pamela Rosenkranz’s work represents a highly unique contribution to contemporary art, reflecting recent, radically transformative shifts in the philosophical and scientific understanding of humanity and nature.

In 2015, Pamela Rosenkranz represented Switzerland at the 56th Venice Biennale with a multisensory installation entitled Our Product. A viscous liquid, pink in colour and scented, permeated the Swiss Pavilion. In 2023, she revealed an important public sculpture, Old Tree – a bright red and pink form that resembles the branching systems of human organs – at New York’s High Line. Pamela Rosenkranz’s work has been presented at institutions including the Centre d'art contemporain, Geneva (2010), the Basel Kunsthalle (2012), the Swiss Pavilion at the Venice Biennale (2015), K21 Düsseldorf (2017) and the Kunsthaus Bregenz (2021). Her works also feature in the collections of the Centre Georges Pompidou and of the MoMa in New York. In May 2025, a monographic exhibition will be dedicated to her at the Stedelijk Museum (the Netherlands).

Miroslav Šik – an architect in imperfect harmony

Miroslav Šik (b.1953, Prague) is an architect, theoretician and emeritus professor of architecture. As a professor at the EPF Lausanne, he taught for a remarkable 60 semesters. Miroslav Šik is a major figure of ‘analogue architecture’. This approach combines existing models and foreign elements through realist representations of architecture (charcoal drawings), while rejecting both postmodernism and classical modernism. The movement was theorised in the 1980s, profoundly shaping Swiss architecture and influencing its most prominent figures.

As an architect, his ‘altneu’ works share a common feature: unconditional acceptance of the existing environment. His buildings, such as the Hotel La Longeraie in Morges, the Maison Bürgerhuus in Haidenstein, and the Catholic Centre St. Antonius in Egg, subtly blend into their surroundings, linking the old and the new. Since 2018, Šik has been teaching at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. His agency, Šik Partner, is based in Zurich. In 2024, he was awarded the State Prize for Architecture by the Czech Ministry of Culture.

Swiss Grand Award for Art/Prix Meret Oppenheim (PMO)

The Swiss Grand Award for Art/Prix Meret Oppenheim has been recognising figures working in the fields of art, architecture, curation, research, and art criticism since 2001. Nominees each receive CHF 40,000 in prize money. The 2025 Swiss Grand Award for Art/Prix Meret Oppenheim will be presented as part of the Swiss Art Awards, on Monday 16 June in Basel, in the presence of Federal Councillor Elisabeth Baume-Schneider.

A publication featuring unpublished interviews with Ursula Badrutt and Felix Lehner, Bice Curiger and Pamela Rosenkranz, and Lukas Imhof and Miroslav Šik will be released, alongside three films showcasing the laureates. The Swiss Art Awards exhibition will open on 16 June in Hall 1.1 at the Messe Basel. It will run during Art Basel, from 17 to 22 June 2025.