DANIEL & FLORENCE GUERLAIN
An integral part of the artistic scene since 2006, every year the Daniel and Florence Guerlain Foundation’s Contemporary Drawing Prize honours a laureate from among the three artists selected by a committee of seven experts.
The Prize concerns artists for whom drawing on paper or cardboard is a significant part of their work. The nominated artists can be of French or foreign nationality on condition that they reside in France or have a privileged cultural link through institutional exhibitions. All graphic mediums are accepted except for computer or mechanical processes.
The laureate is chosen by a jury of collectors which is renewed each year.
The Prize’s endowment: 25 000 euros, including 15 000 euros for the laureate and 5 000 euros for each of the two other artists.
A work by the laureate is offered to a French institution by the Foundation.
Promote and highlight the place of contemporary drawing in art
Contemporary art collectors for more than 30 years, Daniel and Florence Guerlain rapidly developed a passion for drawing and have put together a collection of works from more than two hundred and forty artists of forty or so nationalities. The quality and wealth of this collection were revealed by their donation of 1200 drawings to the Centre Pompidou and dedicated exhibitions in Paris (470 works at the Centre Pompidou, 2013), in Libourne (100 drawings at the Musée des beaux-arts, Chapelle du Carmel, 2014), in Sweden (250 drawings at the Nordiska Akvarellmuseet, 2015-2016) and in Aalborg, Denmark (250 drawings at the Kunsten Museum, 2016).
But Daniel and Florence Guerlain have not contented themselves with putting together the most important private collection of contemporary drawings in France. As early as 2006, they created the Contemporary Drawing Prizewhich rapidly became a benchmark on the art scene. Why a prize dedicated to drawing? Quite simply because this couple of collectors wished to promote and highlight a medium embodying both great classical tradition and bold modernity. For a long time used as an instrument of apprenticeship or a means of study, little by little drawing acquired its own full-fledged status nowadays acknowledged by everyone. Considered to be the finest means of capturing fleeting intuition and the closest medium to thought, drawing allows for a freedom of expression that always goes straight to the essential. Then again, the diversity of the graphic means - pencil, charcoal, ink, wash tint, gouache, watercolour, pastel, felt tip or sanguine – is such that works on paper or cardboard, collages and wall drawings offer a limitless field of exploration for connoisseurs, ever more passionate and growing in number, of contemporary drawing.
The exceptional dedicated exhibition by the Centre Pompidou in 2017 of the 30 artists distinguished by the Prize illustrates the recognition of the quality and importance of the work accomplished by these great French art patrons. The first exhibition of the Drawing Prize abroad was presented in Germany at the Wilhelm-Hack-Museum, Ludwigshafen until the 24th of February 2019.
The actors in the 2025 Drawing Prize
The 2025 International Jury
Every year the Foundation gathers together a jury around Daniel and Florence Guerlain, exclusively comprised of French and foreign collectors given the task of choosing the winner.
Renewed for each edition, this year the jury is comprised of:
- Isabelle Dervaux, French-American
- Richard Mumby, American
- Carole Neuberger, American
- Irina Zucca Alessandrelli, Italian
- François-Roger Cazala, French
- Antoine Godeau, French
- Jean-Bernard Ponthus, French
- Florence & Daniel Guerlain, French
The Selection Committee
Since the creation of the prize, the selection of artists is made by a permanent committee of six experts:
- Emmanuelle Brugerolles, Honorary General Curator of Heritage
- Yuan-Chih Cheng, adviser to the Department of Artistic Creation at the French Ministry of Culture
- Hervé Halgand, collector
- Lucia Pesapane, exhibition curator
- Florence and Daniel Guerlain, collectors and founders of the Drawing Prize.
Laureates
Silvia Bächli, Switzerland (2007), Sandra Vásquez de la Horra, Chile (2009), Catharina Van Eetvelde, Belgium (2010), Marcel Van Eeden, Netherlands (2011), Jorinde Voigt, Germany (2012), Susan Hefuna, Germany (2013), Tomasz Kowalski, Poland (2014), Jockum Nordström, Sweden (2015), Cameron Jamie, United States (2016), Ciprian Muresan, Romania (2017), Mamma Andersson, Sweden (2018), Claire Morgan, Irland (2019), Juan Uslé, Spain (2020), Françoise Pétrovitch, France (2021), Olga Chernysheva, Russia (2022), Pascal Leyder, Belgium (2023), Amir Nave, Israël (2024).
NOMINATED ARTISTS - 2025 EDITION
A virtuoso of drawing, Gideon Kiefer creates a universe between dream and reality.
Through his works evoking childhood, landscapes, and art history, he subtly raises awareness about the ecological crisis.
Having mastered drawing since his earliest years, as well as engraving and lithography, he favors what he calls "the frankness of drawing" despite his practice in other mediums.
In his varied works - from small to large format, from pencil to watercolor - he incorporates personal references, particularly inspired by the antique art catalogs collected by his grandfather, and develops a particular attraction to Dalí's surrealism.
Gideon Kiefer deliberately disrupts his drawings that could be so perfect, by erasing them or adding another medium or quotations.
His conceptual approach manifests through daily creation of works and the use of texts that dialogue with his drawings.
He addresses the issue of global warming, evoking an uncertain future. Romantic in essence, particularly in his representations of forests and glaciers, he oscillates between dream and reality.
The bird, a recurring motif in his work, symbolizes the fragility of our civilization by recalling its connection to extinct dinosaurs.
Beneath a peaceful appearance - soft tones, controlled lines - his works conceal a latent tension.
Paysage Fautif : Nature Morte
April 9, 2013
Pencil, gouache and ballpoint pen on book cover
18 x 25 cm.
©Gideon Kiefer.
Through various mediums and particularly drawing, Alice Maher explores ancestral myths and the unconscious, questioning our origins and identity. Her art affirms a feminist vision of the body in harmony with nature.
Discovering art in the 1980s through artists like Louise Bourgeois and Helen Chadwick, Alice Maher engages in a discourse on feminism, domination, and colonization.
Her landscapes evoke her native Ireland, a dispossessed land whose language was forbidden. Her work, both political and personal, explores the depths of the unconscious.
Drawing inspiration from mythology and ancient stories, she explores the narratives of Mary Magdalene and Cassandra through motifs such as hair and tongues, inviting us to rethink our beliefs.
In her art, humans transform into hybrid creatures, merging with the animal and plant world.
She celebrates the current emergence of concepts of fluidity and inter-species, themes she has long explored in her drawings.
Her technique is dynamic, particularly in large format where she uses charcoal with a process of erasing and starting over that reflects her thinking. Her more intimate works, in small format pencil, explore the interior and exterior of bodies, often placed at the center of a white space that she considers a zone of suspension, perhaps seeking to reveal our true nature.
Vox Hybrida 1
2018
Relief print on paper, hand-colored
120 x 80 cm.
©The Artist, courtesy of Purdy Hicks Gallery
Ettore Tripodi blends classical references and cinematic narrative to explore everyday life from a strange and fascinating angle.
With fine marker or India ink lines, sometimes enhanced with watercolor, he creates familiar scenes populated with domestic interiors and observant animals.
Drawing inspiration from great masters like Rembrandt, Delacroix, Cocteau, Picasso, and De Chirico, he develops a unique narrative approach. "When I start drawing," he says, "I have a conceptual idea that evolves across the pages, developing like a set of sensations."
His work revisits classical myths with a contemporary perspective, as in his reinterpretation of the wolf of Romulus and Remus.
Oscillating between the Garden of Delights and strange everyday life, he creates a unique visual language through his precise lines, evoking the style of the 1930s while remaining resolutely contemporary.
Notturni 34
2018
Ink and watercolor on paper
35 x 50 cm.
©Ettore Tripodi.
FIGURES, SPONSORS & PARTNERS
The Drawing Prize in figures
18 editions since its launch
The Contemporary Drawing Prize was launched in 2006. It became annual as from 2009.
3 artists nominated for each edition
6 experts for the selection committee
9 collectors in the jury
The winner is chosen by a jury comprising nine members, including the two founders and seven private collectors, either French or foreign.
The jury is renewed for each prize. (Vote by secret ballot).
1 laureate
The Drawing Prize is awarded to an artistic work. The laureate receives an endowment of 15.000 euros and the two other selected artists receive an endowment of 5.000 euros each. A work by the laureate is offered to a French institution by the Foundation.
The Drawing Prize’s Sponsors
The Cercle des Amis of the Daniel & Florence Guerlain Contemporary Art Foundation
The Foundation’s support group, the ‘Cercle’ is strongly committed to the prize that it assists at every stage.
La Maison Guerlain, www.guerlain.fr
Neuflize OBC, www.neuflizeobc.fr
Artcurial, www.artcurial.com
Artprice by ArtMarket.com
Voisin Consulting Life Sciences, www.voisinconsulting.com
Groupe Élysées Monceau, www.elysees-monceau.fr
Groupe Pasteur Mutualité, www.gpm.fr
PatrimOne assurances
Arte Generali
Partners
Le Salon du Dessin - La Maison Ruinart