02.12.2020
Münzkabinett
The Münzkabinett of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin presents the winner of the J. Sanford Saltus Award of the American Numismatic Society. The Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Art of the Medal will be awarded to the German artist Anna Franziska Schwarzbach at a ceremony in Berlin, Germany, on Thursday, 3 December 2020.
Anna Franziska Schwarzbach was born in 1949 in Saxonia, Germany, into an artist’s household. Her father, Hans Brockhage, was himself a well-known sculptor in East Germany, and she studied architecture and later art. Since the 1970s, she has worked as a female sculptor and medallist in Berlin, where her sculptures are displayed in many public places after 1990. Her significant oeuvre as a medallist delves at times deep into German history, but ultimately her main focus is on portraiture, in particular of subjects who were often ignored in more official medallic art. Unusual too is her preferred medium of cast iron, which has a long history in Germany as 'fer de Berlin' in the 19th century promoted by Karl Friedrich Schinkel.
The J. Sanford Saltus Award has been awarded on a regular basis since 1913, and Schwarzbach is one of eleven women who have received this prestigious award in the field of medallic sculpture. Other female recipients were Laura G. Fraser (USA, 1926), Gertrude G. Lathrop (USA, 1950), Karen Worth (USA, 1979), Ewa Olszewska-Borys (Poland, 1993), Marianne Letterie (Netherlands, 1994), Nicola Moss (UK, 1996), Leonda Finke (USA, 1997), Jeanne Stevens-Sollman (USA, 1999), Dora de Pédery-Hunt (Canada, 2003); Mashiko (USA, 2019). Schwarzbach is after Bernd Göbel (2000) the second German sculptor who get the international renowned prize.
Anna Franziska Schwarzbach will be awarded the Saltus Medal on Thursday, 3 December, at 12 noon EST (GMT +1) in Berlin. The program will include presentations by Dr. Ute Wartenberg, ANS President and member of the Saltus Award committee, Professor Dr. Bernhard Weisser, Coin Cabinet, Berlin, a member of the Saltus Award Advisory Committee and Thomas Bauer-Friedrich, director of the Kunstmuseum Moritzburg Halle (Saale) where a big solo exhibiton about Anna Franziska Schwarzbach's oeuvre will be shown in 2021. A short film about the artist, which was commissioned for the ceremony, will be shown.
Anyone interested in the event (in English and German) can join via Cisco Webex.