NEW YORK, NY.- Prize Prints: The Queen Sonja Print Award, an exhibition of contemporary Nordic prints from the recipients and founders of The Queen Sonja Print Award—an international prize established to encourage artists working in the graphic arts—opened at Scandinavia House: The Nordic Center in America, in New York City, on Friday, April 17, 2015. Featuring recent work by the 2012 and 2014 award winners, Tiina Kivinen (Finland) and Svend-Allan Sørensen (Denmark), as well as a selection of works by the award’s founders, printmakers Her Majesty Queen Sonja of Norway, Kjell Nupen, and Ørnulf Opdahl, the exhibition offers an intimate view into contemporary printmaking in the Nordic countries.

Edward P. Gallagher, President of The AmericanScandinavian Foundation, states: “We are delighted to present this exhibition at Scandinavia House, introducing New York to the work of two exciting artists and celebrating the launch of The Queen Sonja Print Award as an international prize, perhaps the largest ever to be awarded to printmakers.”

Prize Prints features a diverse selection of artworks from five Nordic artists. The 2014 prize winner, Svend-Allan Sørensen, works with a variety of printmaking techniques, including lithography, linocut, and woodcut. His graphic works, often imbued with a certain whimsy or playfulness, operate at the intersection of text and image, where meaning is doubled, expanded, and complicated. In the series Animal Soup of Time, Sørensen interweaves text-based linocuts of literary snippets from Henry David Thoreau, William S. Burroughs, and Allen Ginsberg (the series’s title is taken from Ginsberg’s Howl)—all of which take up the subject of nature and hunting— with abstract renderings resembling arrowheads or seals.

In contrast to Sørensen’s stark, graphic works, the 2012 prize winner Tiina Kivinen’s prints are crafted with delicate nuances of gray and black tones. Working primarily with drypoint, monotype, and mezzotint techniques, Kivinen creates lyrical, semi-abstract renderings of landscapes and figures that offer viewers brief moments of recognition in her ethereal compositions.

In addition to works by Sørensen and Kivinen, the exhibition features a selection of works from the three celebrated Norwegian artists who founded The Queen Sonja Print Award—Kjell Nupen, Ørnulf Opdahl, and H.M. Queen Sonja—including the collaborative 24-work portfolio Three Journeys, Three Landscapes that launched the prize. Comprising eight graphic works by each artist, the portfolio takes the Nordic landscape as inspiration, and illustrates the unique technical and thematic explorations the artists undertook throughout its creation. Nupen is represented by a diverse selection of collages, aquatints, and etchings that reflect his characteristic use of expressive color and tone; Opdahl by a number of intimately scaled aquatints and etchings contemplating the varied expressions of the Nordic winter landscape; and H.M. Queen Sonja by a series of otherworldly aquatints originating from photographs taken on a 2006 trip to an ice cave on Svalbard. A selection of more recent works by these artists will also be on view.

Established in 2011 to encourage young artists working in the graphic arts, The Queen Sonja Print Award is presented every other year. While the award has been restricted to Nordic artists— nominated by the Nordic national art museums, Nordic printmakers’ associations, and board of The Queen Sonja Print Award—it will open to international candidates in 2016 with an expanded circle of professional nominators from around the world.