A jury presided by former director of Mudam Marie-Claude Beaud has awarded the €10,000 prize to 86-year-old artist Berthe Lutgen.

Described by culture minister Sam TansonSam Tanson as “a powerful sources of inspiration and guidance for a whole generation of artists and citizens”, Berthe Lutgen has been announced as the first winner of the new bi-annual Lëtzebuerger Konschtpräis.

Congratulating Lutgen, Tanson praised the artist’s “tireless commitment to the arts and society” as well as her “development of a clean and unequivocal artistic language”.

Lutgen herself describes her artistic process as twofold. “It is realistic as far as it refers to women, women as seen in their social surroundings and the images pertaining to them as in art,” she writes on her website. “This became an option for me in the late 1960s and it has been underlying my work right up to the present day. Stylistically I grant myself absolute freedom.”

The jury was comprised of art historian and head of the Lëtzebuerger Konschtarchiv Jamie Armstrong, art critic Lucien Kayser, director of the National Museum of History and Art Paul Reiles and museum educator and former head of the educational department at the National Museum of History and Art, Edmond Thill. They said that the choice of Lutgen for the inaugural Konschtpräis was unanimous. Lutgen, they said, “seemed to meet all the criteria set out in the creation of the prize: a career and a set of recognised works, a unique place in the Luxembourg art scene.”

The award ceremony will take place on 11 November 2022 as part of the Luxembourg Art Week.