Provocative conceptual artist Maurizio Cattelan has been
named the winner of the 2026 Preis der Nationalgalerie. Known for his use of humor to question social structures and systems of power—perhaps most notoriously in works like
Comedian, 2019, a
banana duct-taped to a wall—Cattelan was unanimously selected for the honor, generally considered Germany’s premier award for contemporary artists, and will receive his first institutional solo exhibition in Germany at the Neue Nationalgalerie next fall. To mark the occasion,
Artforum revisits the
Summer 1995 Openings feature in which Olivier Zahm introduced Cattelan’s work to
Artforum’s readers.
“Playing, feigning, faking, and artificiality are Cattelan’s accomplices. He equates social transgression with artistic transgression—a move well known since Marcel Duchamp wrote a bad check to pay his dentist,”
writes Zahm. “Cattelan’s attack on the system from within is a sufficiently rare tour de force,” he continues: “he does not hesitate to leave himself exposed, even compromised.”
—The editors
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