Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan is among the most influential figures in contemporary art and will be awarded the 2026 Preis der Nationalgalerie. From September 2026 to February 2027, he will be presented for the first time in Germany in a major solo exhibition.

Since the early 1990s, Maurizio Cattelan (born 1960 in Padua) has shaped international artistic discourse with works that move between sculpture, installation and conceptual practice, consistently resisting fixed interpretations. Marked by sharp humour and bitter seriousness, his works combine provocation with a profound reflection on social, political and historical structures.

Iconic works such as La Nona Ora (1999), depicting Pope John Paul II struck by a meteorite, Him (2001) or an animatronic sculpture referencing the protagonist of Günter Grass’s The Tin Drum, exemplify Cattelan’s artistic strategy. He employs shock, irritation and moral ambivalence to raise fundamental questions of our time: questions of guilt and responsibility, power and vulnerability, memory and collective trauma. His practice is permeated by an aesthetic of “comic existentialism” — a fusion of humour and tragedy, irony and depth — rendering his works both accessible and deeply unsettling. As an artist with an international practice, Cattelan brings a distinctly European perspective to questions of identity, responsibility and collective remembrance. His works invite viewers to confront history not as a closed narrative, but as an ongoing, contested process — provocative, critical and poetic. Cattelan’s ironic questioning of authority and “truth” is equally urgent today. At a moment when institutions — museums, politics and the media — are reassessing their roles and credibility, his work scrutinises structures of power within and beyond the art system, without resorting to moral judgement. By embracing ambiguity and resisting clear-cut positions, his art creates spaces for critical thought.

In the German context, where modes of remembrance are currently being renegotiated, Cattelan’s work acquires renewed relevance. His iconic gestures, oscillating between exaggeration, irony and pain, challenge rituals of commemoration and open new perspectives on contemporary social debates. In times of increasing political polarisation, his subversive humour operates as a liberating force: provocation appears not as cynicism, but as a form of resistance and constructive reflection.

With this exhibition, Maurizio Cattelan returns to Berlin, where in 2006 he played a decisive role as co-curator of the 4th Berlin Biennale, contributing significantly to the city’s international standing as a centre for contemporary art.

The Neue Nationalgalerie, with its iconic building by Mies van der Rohe, provides an ideal setting for this exhibition. Positioned between modernity and the present, it becomes a stage for Cattelan’s multifaceted work — as a mirror, commentary and productive disturbance of our time.

Curators

The exhibition is curated by Lisa Botti, curator at the Neue Nationalgalerie, together with Klaus Biesenbach, Director of the Neue Nationalgalerie.

Jury

The expert jury for the Preis der Nationalgalerie 2026 is made up of outstanding international directors: Emma Lavigne (Director of the Pinault Collection, Paris) and Sam Keller (Director of the Fondation Beyeler, Riehen) as well as Klaus Biesenbach (Director of the Neue Nationalgalerie). In addition to the expert jurors, the curators of the Nationalgalerie and the members of the FREUNDE der Nationalgalerie (FRIENDS of the National Gallery) were also eligible to submit nominations.

The exhibition is made possible by FREUNDE der Nationalgalerie and supported by BMW.

A special exhibition of the Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin