MALMÖ.- For the sixth time the Fredrik Roos Art Prize ceremony was hosted by Moderna Museet Malmö. With a total award of 600,000 SEK (about 63,000 euros), it is one of Sweden’s largest grants for artists. After a thorough process that sought nominations from every fine arts college in Sweden, the 2017 Fredrik Roos Art Prize has been awarded to Oskar Hult, Jonas Silfversten Bergman, and Josefine Östberg Olsson.

On March 28, Fredrik Roos’s birthday, an exhibition opened at Moderna Museet Malmö with this year’s three recipients of the Fredrik Roos Art Prize. The recipients have been selected from a shortlist of ten graduating art students, two from each of Sweden’s five fine arts colleges. From this group, the three recipients were chosen by a jury comprising the Fredrik Roos Foundation together with Daniel Birnbaum, Ann-Sofi Noring, and Iris Müller-Westermann from Moderna Museet. This year the Fredrik Roos Art Prize has been awarded to Oskar Hult, Jonas Silfversten Bergman, and Josefine Östberg Olsson, who each receive a grant of 200,000 SEK (21,000 euros).

“We are very happy to continue our collaboration with the Fredrik Roos Foundation on this generous grant, which gives artists an opportunity to travel and gather new impressions,” says Iris Müller-Westermann, Director of the Moderna Museet Malmö. “The selection of this year’s recipients was extremely difficult, but each of the three artists represents a different exciting artistic style.”

Oskar Hult (b. 1986), a graduate of the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm, is awarded the 2017 Fredrik Roos Art Prize, according to the jury’s statement, “for paintings that in a highly sensitive way allow materials and fragments from outside the world of art to be incorporated into new contexts in a non-hierarchical order. His pictures become time capsules that invite observers to immerse themselves and focus their gaze.”

Jonas Silfversten Bergman (b. 1991), a graduate of the Umeå Academy of Fine Arts, is awarded the 2017 Fredrik Roos Art Prize “for his talent at developing a manner of painting based on industrial materials, colors, and symbols that communicates as much about what lies beyond painting as it does about painting itself.”

Josefine Östberg Olsson (b. 1983), a graduate of the Valand Academy in Gothenburg, is awarded the 2017 Fredrik Roos Art Prize “for her talent at exploring social stigmas and predominant customs through sculptural, performance-based works.”

The museum is also featuring the recipients in an exhibition that continues until April 16, 2017.

The Fredrik Roos Art Prize is awarded to artists thirty-five years of age or younger, and is intended to be used for continuing education, acquiring new knowledge and ideas through travel, and the like. The criteria for the grant are as follows: “An artist who, in the tradition of Fredrik Roos, is prepared to take risks in his or her work. One who believes in him- or herself and has a style of his or her own. The artist must be at most thirty-five years old, come from the Nordic region, and work primarily with painting and sculpture.”

The previous recipients are Sandra Mujinga, Karl Patric Näsman, and André Talborn (2016); Martha Ossowska Persson, Ida Persson, and Idun Baltzersen (2015); Tomas Lundgren (2014); Paul Fägerskiöld (2013); and Oskar Mörnerud (2011).