The Sovereign Portuguese Art Prize celebrates the practices of leading contemporary artists living in Portugal and its diaspora

Associação SAF announced Portuguese artist Jorge Queiroz as the winner of the 2022 Sovereign Portuguese Art Prize and recipient of €25,000 for his work ‘Duende’. This is the inaugural edition of the Prize, which celebrates the practices of leading contemporary artists living in Portugal, and its diaspora.

Winner Jorge Queiroz is an artist primarily concerned with painting. Of ‘Duende’, Jorge commented: “In my work, impulses and reasons lead to basic or original polarity: sense and nonsense, logic and the illogical, the conscious and the unconscious, full, empty, abstract and figurative, narrative and fragment.

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“It was wonderful and a very big surprise to have won the 2022 Sovereign Portuguese Art Prize. I am very happy. The purpose of both of this Prize and the Students Prize is noble and highly commended.”

Judge Joana Vasconcelos said: “Jorge is an amazing artist. I had the privilege of being his colleague in school and also in a gallery in France. His work surprises me every time I see it.”

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Joana Vasconcelos (Artist) and Maura Marvão (Head of Phillips in Portugal and Spain), photo by Kenton Thatcher

Fellow Judge Tim Marlow added: “It is great to see an artist with an established reputation, hugely respected, who is still able to produce work that is fresh, questioning and surprising.”

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Tim Marlow (Chief Executive and Director, Design – Museum, London) and Philippe Vergne (Director of Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art, Porto), Photo by Sebastian Nevols

Nineteen independent arts professionals comprising curators, collectors and academics nominated artists to enter the Prize and 214 entries were received. Thirty artists were then shortlisted by an esteemed judging panel, including artists Ai Weiwei and Joana Vasconcelos; Vicente Todolí, Founding Director of Serralves Contemporary Art Museum; David Elliott, freelance writer, curator and former Founding Director of the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo; Maura Marvão, Head of Phillips in Portugal and Spain; Phillippe Vergne, French curator and Director of the Serralves Contemporary Art Museum and Tim Marlow, Chief Executive and Director of the Design Museum, London.

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Judges Ai Weiwei (Artist), David Elliott (Writer, curator and museum director) and Vicente Todolí (Artistic director of Hangar Bicocc)