Feast day 2025
The Academy of Fine Arts' prizes, awards and scholarships
At the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts' Celebration Day on Friday, February 14, 2025, prizes, rewards and scholarships worth approximately SEK 1.500.000 were awarded.
The Art Academy's Prize Committee decides which artists are awarded funds from the various funds and foundations. This year, the following artists were awarded:
The Sergel Prize
The Sergel Committee has decided to award the 2025 Sergel Prize to
EVA LÖFDAHL
on the ground
Eva Löfdahl is one of Sweden's most important sculptors through her strong work and her ability to challenge conventional boundaries within sculpture and installation.
The works are characterized by a conceptual and formal sharpness where material, space and form interact in a unique way. A way that forces the viewer to question both the function and meaning of the objects and spaces.
Löfdahl's art is often characterized by a subtle humor and a minimalist aesthetic that both confuses and fascinates. The works create a densification. Although the materials are often perceived as light and temporary, the special presence that sculpture can achieve is established, at once intimate and monumental.
Eva Löfdahl's ability to challenge and make the field of sculpture relevant to generations of artists is unparalleled. Through her experimental and often complex works, she continues to inspire and drive both Swedish contemporary art and the field of sculpture forward.
The Axel Theofron Sandberg Watercolour Prize
The Art Academy's Prize Committee has decided to award Axel Theofron Sandberg's Watercolor Prize to
NINA BONDESON
on the ground
Nina Bondeson's artistry takes the form of twisted fairy tales, a nervous system of recurring characters who are placed in relation to each other.
An ongoing flow where everything finds its place in an intricate interplay, linked together by wires, hoses, cables or blood vessels. Nothing is solitary, everything is interconnected.
The Axel Theofron Sandberg Watercolour Prize
The Art Academy's Prize Committee has decided to award Axel Theofron Sandberg's Watercolor Prize to
YLVA CARLGREN
on the ground:
For a watercolor painting where light is depicted. Up close, the paintings give an opaque impression, the light does not come from the paper but from within the paint.
For the viewer, a floating spatiality arises, the surface of the walls reflects the light in all directions and the eye moves unhindered through the image.
The Axel Theofron Sandberg Watercolour Prize
The Art Academy's Prize Committee has decided to award Axel Theofron Sandberg's Watercolor Prize to
ROGER METTO
For a painting that in its flow and clarity is close to a roaring stream – color ripples and flows in his Norrland landscape. For the viewer, it becomes a winding journey among mountains and valleys.
Inez Leander's Reward
The Academy of Fine Arts' Prize Committee has decided to give the Inez Leanders Award to
EDITH HAMMER
on the ground
Edith Hammar, like Hieronymus Bosch, creates a complex visual world where real or imaginary events show people in their passion, boredom, weakness, evil and fear. A wonderfully cheeky, but tender wandering, as bizarre and uplifting as it is sad. Edith's artistry is an explosion of her own experiences as a queer. With a graceful and authoritarian line, her cheeky pen defies convention and sends a rebellious greeting out into the world.
Göran Lagervall's prize
The Art Academy's Prize Committee has decided to give
Göran Lagervall's price to
OLA ANDERSON
on the ground:
For his important voice in the public conversation about urban and housing construction. He is analytical and educational. Ola Andersson is characterized by his writing with nerve and edge and is combative. As an architect, he has designed beautiful, pleasant and functional homes of high quality.
The Augusta, Oscar and Harry Höckert Prize
The Art Academy's Prize Committee has decided to give
Augusta, Oscar and Harry Höckerts Prize to
PAUL FÄGERSKIÖLD
on the ground:
Painting and space-time.
For a work that with precise means takes on painting as an almost anachronistic tool for depicting and making present space-time in its most elusive aspects. The unimaginably great distance, the most prolonged determination of time is processed and depicted as signs. With the help of various references, investigations and metaphors, Fägerskiöld re-establishes a conversation with humans about our greatest and most fundamental conditions regarding our place in existence, with painting as an insistent membrane.
The Augusta, Oscar and Harry Höckert Prize
The Art Academy's Prize Committee has decided to give
Augusta, Oscar and Harry Höckerts Prize to
WOOL WIG
on the ground:
Ulla Wiggen has, through a long career as an artist, developed a visual world that, with analytical precision, acts as portals or a kind of account of the reception of various signals. Wiring diagrams and disintegrating machine parts establish symbiotic relationships with the organic. Huge human irises that create an interaction between seeing and being seen. They become reminders of the seesaw that the relationship between technology and humans constitutes, between the extended perception it offers and how information lands in the flesh.
The Paul Hedqvist Award
The Academy of Fine Arts' Prize Board has decided to give Paul Hedqvist's Award to
MATTIA'S PALM
on the ground:
Mattias Palme has a unique ability to design schools with both interesting floor plans and sensual qualities. For nearly 20 years, Palme has passionately shaped these buildings that are so important to our society. From Kramfors to Ängelholm, with assignments often obtained through competitions. Adolfsbergsskolan in Knivsta is particularly notable. The projects' often tight budgets make his achievements even more impressive. Palme is a practitioner but has also published texts and lectured on the subject.
Asmund and Lizzie Arles Sculptor Prize
The Art Academy's Prize Committee has decided to give
Asmund and Lizzie Arles sculptor prize to
SUSANNA MARCUS JABLONSKI
on the ground:
Susanna Marcus Jablonski works with larger sculptural installations. She has a rare ability to choose her motifs and materials with sharpness, depth and sensitivity. Fragments of memories float in the rooms. The thin glass column encloses a fossil, a ball rests in its pit, a seed cast in bronze is attached to the wall with a needle.
The details in Susanna Marcus Jablonski's universe form the contexts. They are points of pain and at the same time reservoirs of hope.
The Hans and Desy Viksten Grant
The Art Academy's Prize Committee has decided to award the Hans and Desy Vikstens Scholarship to
KRISTINA ABELLI ELANDER
on the ground:
Kristina Abelli Elander creates her works with sharpness and great care. She moves freely between different fields and techniques. Humor and a critical eye coexist with great seriousness. The super bride and death, crocheted aliens and a graphic novel. Film and dance. It is alive and rich.
Vera and Göran Agnekil's scholarship
The Academy of Fine Arts' Prize Committee has decided to award Vera and Göran Agnekil's scholarship to
PIA FERM
on the ground:
Pia Ferm quickly turns scribbles into magnificent tapestries. The different levels of the tufted pile make the works vibrate. Comic book-like still lifes say everything and nothing – as powerfully clear as they are unwilling to be decoded. The moment you know what you are seeing, the motifs slink away; comb, plow, rake, hand make their mark across the fields.
Vera and Göran Agnekil's scholarship
The Academy of Fine Arts' Prize Committee has decided to award Vera and Göran Agnekil's scholarship to
REBECCA BEBBEN ANDERSSON
on the ground:
Rebecka Bebben Andersson's vanitas paintings are the opposite of emptiness. Lonely skulls fill the surface and gape at each other. As if impatient, the faces move out of focus; they seem to want to move on to the next material – an artistic rotation, always with the same unwavering drive. Gigantic paper collages form forests and fallen trunks.
Vera and Göran Agnekil's scholarship
The Academy of Fine Arts' Prize Committee has decided to award Vera and Göran Agnekil's scholarship to
ALQUMIT ALHAMAD
on the ground:
Alqumit Alhamad uses the dissonance of history to give his personal narrative agency. With strong faith in the viewer's insights, he meets the accepted with a convincing skepticism. At once analytical and emotional, he depicts a world that illustrates human complexity.
Martha Larsson's and Nisse Zetterberg's Rome scholarship
The Art Academy's Prize Committee has decided to award Martha Larsson's and Nisse Zetterberg's Rome scholarship to
MARTIN GUSTAVSSON
on the ground:
Martin Gustavsson's artistry is driven by a relentless desire for experimentation where reality collides with fiction, the enigmatic with the intellectual. We witness a negotiation between intention and desire.
The past is rejuvenated when the paintings detach from the retina and materialize in the same room as our own bodies.
Erik Lindberg's fund for the promotion of Swedish medal art
The Art Academy's Prize Committee has decided to give a reward out of
Erik Lindberg's fund for the promotion of Swedish medal art
to
GUDRUN WIRGÅRD
In symbiosis between eye, soul and hand, she creates finely tuned portraits and reliefs that, within the physical limitations of the reliefs, make matter live and vibrate. The forms seem to gently caress from dead materials, so that light and shadow are brought to speak eternally. Poetry arises and touches.
Gudrun Wirgård's relief art clearly touches on the distinctive conditions and tighter reins of medal art. A new expressive language can open up