Presented the Memorial Grant

- “What better way to honour my friend and mentor than to give the Kjell Nupen Memorial Grant to an artist he praised and appreciated?”, Queen Sonja stated.

It was Kjell Nupen himself who first brought Adam Saks to the attention of the board of the H.M. Queen Sonja Art Foundation and nominated him for the Queen Sonja Print Award in 2014. This evening the Queen was able to introduce Mr Saks as the first recipient of the Kjell Nupen Memorial Grant:

- Tonight’s artist is Danish and trained at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen, and Berlin University of the Arts.
He is highly accomplished, and works with a great variety of printmaking techniques. His art span from bold and colourful woodcuts to more delicate and tender etchings. The artistic style is distinctive and lies in the tension between the figurative and abstraction. His works often have an ambiguous narrative, and they are indeed wonderful – some of which you can see for yourselves in this hall.
(…) I hope you will assist me when we now give the grant and the diploma to the first recipient of The Kjell Nupen Memorial Grant: Adam Saks.

The decision to award the grant to Mr Saks was announced earlier this autumn, on 5 September – the birthday of Kjell Nupen. The grant comprises a work stay at Universal Limited Art Editions’ (ULAE) workshop and a cash prize of NOK 50 000.

The award ceremony was held at the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), where the Norwegian power company Statkraft had celebrated its 120th anniversary earlier in the day. The Queen was present at part of that event, attending a seminar and panel discussion on green energy.

Kjell Nupen Memorial Grant

The grant was established last year in commemoration of Norwegian artist Kjell Nupen, who died on 12 March 2014. It is awarded every second year to a Nordic artist who has demonstrated excellence in graphic art/printmaking.

The grant is a collaboration between the H.M. Queen Sonja Art Foundation and master printer Bill Goldston at ULAE in New York. The board of the Foundation is responsible for selecting the recipient, who is announced biennially on 5 September, the birthday of Mr Nupen.