The Aurelie Nemours Prize was founded in 2000 by Aurelie Nemours, one of the major artists of geometric abstraction in the second half of the twentieth century. It rewards any artist, regardless of his discipline, whose work pursues the rigorous and spiritually imbued plastic quest that has been his own. She wrote: "Thinking that art is a struggle against the disarray of our civilization, I firmly believe that the spiritual charge of art is the only recourse and the only salvation."

This Prize has been awarded since 2000 by the Nemours Cultural Association, chaired by Serge Lemoine. In order to ensure the sustainability of the activities of the Nemours Cultural Association and their financing, the artist had decided, in 2001, to create a foundation hosted by the Institut de France: thus was born the Aurelie Nemours Foundation, whose missions are led by the Association.

Since its creation, the Prize has been awarded to Julije Knifer in 2000, then to Imi Knoebel, Adalberto Mecarelli, Bernard Aubertin, Helmut Federle, Cécile Bart, Didier Vermeiren, Jean-François Dubreuil, Philippe Decrauzat, Esther Stocker, Pe Lang and Marianthi Papalexandri-Alexandri in 2021 and, for the year 2023, to the graphic designer Irma Boom and the painter Hans-Jörg Glattfelder. In 2024, the Austrian artist Susanna Fritscher will be awarded.

An installation by Susanna Fritscher will be presented at the Drawing Lab from September 3 to 30 in dialogue with paintings by Aurélie Nemours. The exhibition of preparatory drawings by the two artists will give a more intimate look at this meeting.

Susanna Fritscher, of Austrian origin, has lived and worked in France since the 1980s.

She creates visual and sound installations that reinvent our relationship with reality by disrupting its apparent stability and constancy. The vocabulary of his works is elementary, their materiality ethereal, light, luminous, moving. Large, designed in the exhibition space, they create unique and captivating sensory experiences that invite visitors to a subtle interaction with their environment.

Susanna Fritscher has exhibited in prestigious institutions in France and abroad. In France, his installations have turned the spaces of the Centre Pompidou-Metz, the Lyon Biennale and the Musée d'arts de Nantes into immateriality. His works have been shown and appreciated in many museums and art centers, among them the Louvre Abu Dhabi, the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, the Rudolfinum in Prague and the Forum Ginza Maison Hermès in Tokyo.

For more information on the Aurelie Nemours Prize, click here.