The 2026 National Gallery Prize will be awarded to Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan. The prize honors one of the most influential contemporary artists, who will be represented in Germany for the first time with a solo exhibition. His works, which range from sculpture and installation to conceptual practice, are characterized by sharp humor, bitter seriousness, and a profound reflection on social structures. The exhibition accompanying the National Gallery Prize will open at the Neue Nationalgalerie during Berlin Art Week in September 2026.
Image above: Maurizio Cattelan, Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin. © Peter Rigaud, 2025
Since the early 1990s, Maurizio Cattelan (born 1960, Padua) has been one of the defining voices in international art. His iconic works—including La Nona Ora (1999), a figure of Pope John Paul II struck by a meteorite; Him (2001), a schoolboy praying with the face of Adolf Hitler, and Untitled (2003), an animatronic sculpture that references the protagonist of Günter Grass’s novel The Tin Drum—show how Cattelan uses the potential of shock, irritation, and moral ambivalence to raise central questions of our time: guilt, responsibility, power, and collective trauma. Cattelan’s artistic practice is permeated by an aesthetic of “comic existentialism”—a combination of humor and tragedy, irony and profundity that makes his works appear both accessible and abysmal. With this exhibition, Maurizio Cattelan returns to Berlin, where he co-curated the 4th Berlin Biennale in 2006.
The expert jury for the 2026 National Gallery Prize consists of international museum directors Emma Lavigne (director of the Pinault Collection, Paris), Sam Keller (director of the Fondation Beyeler, Basel), and Klaus Biesenbach (director of the Neue Nationalgalerie). In addition to the expert jurors, the curators of the National Gallery and the members of the FRIENDS of the National Gallery were also eligible to submit nominations.
Emma Lavigne, Sam Keller, Klaus Biesenbach, Jury:
“As co-curator of the 4th Berlin Biennale almost two decades ago, Maurizio Cattelan made a decisive contribution to Berlin’s international positioning as a center for contemporary art.
Today, 20 years later, a solo exhibition at the Neue Nationalgalerie offers an opportunity to reflect on this formative influence in a new social and cultural context.
Cattelan’s work is characterized by themes such as power, religion, death, humor, and memory—issues that are particularly relevant in Berlin with its complex history. As an Italian artist working internationally, he brings a decidedly European perspective to questions of identity, responsibility, and collective memory. His works invite us to think about history in a provocative, critical, and at the same time poetic way.
Cattelan’s work is particularly relevant today in Germany, where forms of remembrance are currently being renegotiated—between the last generations with direct connections to the Nazi era or shaped by the postwar decades, and a younger generation that brings global perspectives to the table.
His iconic gestures, which oscillate between exaggeration, irony, and pain, question the rituals of remembrance, evoke history and stories, and open up new perspectives on our social discussions and debates. In a time of increasing political polarization, his art can help us to understand memory not as a compulsion or duty, but as a lively and relevant way of dealing with the present and the future.
His ironic questioning of authority and “truth” is also gaining new relevance today. At a time when institutions—museums, politics, media—are having to redefine their credibility and social role, Cattelan addresses power relations within and outside the art system—always without moralizing. His works encourage reflection on personal responsibility, the representation of history, and the limits of institutional criticism and authority.
In an atmosphere of political and social hardening, Cattelan’s subversive humor acts as a liberating agent. He shows that provocation and comedy are not merely expressions of cynicism, but forms of resistance and constructive reflection. Especially in the German context, where social debates are often morally charged, his art opens up new spaces for thinking—beyond outrage and polarization.
Cattelan is not an artist of clarity. His strength lies in his ability to tolerate ambivalence, reveal contradictions, and pose new questions. It is precisely this way of thinking in between that can generate productive irritation—and reminds us that ambiguity is not a weakness, but a prerequisite for critical awareness.
The Neue Nationalgalerie, with its iconic building designed by Mies van der Rohe, is predestined as a place between modernism, the 20th and 21st centuries, and the present day to show Cattelan’s work in all its complexity—as a mirror and commentary on our times.
The National Gallery Prize, which celebrates its 25th anniversary this year, has established itself over the decades as one of the most important art prizes, enabling its winners to make a significant impact both nationally and internationally. Today, the National Gallery Prize continues to be a tribute that reflects the internationality and vitality of the current art scene and develops it further within an institutional framework. In this sense, the prize will remain adaptable in 2026 and will be continued in a new format for the first time at the Neue Nationalgalerie. In the form of a solo exhibition, artists who set international standards and whose work has not yet been comprehensively presented in Berlin will be honored. With the change of location, contemporary art will be placed in dialogue with the collection of the Neue Nationalgalerie and its history. The exhibition is made possible by the FREUNDE der Nationalgalerie.
