OREANDA-NEWS. September 21, 2007. Deutsche Bank and “ArtChronika”, Russia’s leading art magazine, and will be presenting their short list of candidates for the “Kandinsky Prize” at a press conference on September 20. The artists of this preliminary selection round will be presented, starting in November, in exhibitions at Moscow’s Central House of Artists and in St. Petersburg. The first Russian prize for contemporary art will be awarded on December 4, 2007, in Moscow for the categories “Artist of the Year”, “Prize for the Best Young Artist”, “Media Art Prize” and the “Audience’s Prize”. The works of the award-winning artists will be on display in 2008 in Germany and the USA.

The objective of the “Kandinsky Prize” is to promote contemporary Russian art and to offer insights into the art scene’s most important trends and perspectives. In this context, this award series has already been compared with the Turner Prize, which honors protagonists of the English art scene in a similar way. The prize jury is comprised of well known Russian and international artists and curators, in addition to a renowned artist, as well as representatives of Deutsche Bank. This high calibre group of experts will be able to drawn on the support of a Board of Trustees, whose members include Shalva Breus, the Editor-in-Chief of ArtChronika magazine, Dr. Tessen von Heydebreck, Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Deutsche Bank Ltd. fnd President of the Board of the Deutsche Bank Foundation, Samuel Keller, the designated Director of the Foundation Beyeler, Basel, and Prof. Christina Weiss, the former German stateminister for cultural affairs and designated chairman of the Verein der Freunde der Nationalgalerie, Berlin.

“With this prize, we are making a commitment to the young Russian art scene,” explains Dr. Tessen von Heydebreck, “and thus continuing what will soon be the 25th year of our commitment in Russia. Following exhibitions that we have sponsored and our own presentations from the Deutsche Bank Collection, we are pleased to be able to provide our support to the talented artists of this country. However, it is also part of the bank’s corporate identity to make it possible for each individual to grow beyond his or her boundaries and in doing so to use the innovative strength of contemporary art.”

Furthermore, this approach is backed by a three-month stay in Villa Romana for the award-winner in the category “Best Young Artist”. The artists’ residence in Florence, representing Deutsche Bank’s oldest cultural commitment, is dedicated, just like the “Kandinsky Prize”, to supporting new art and impressively illustrates the broad international and cross-institutional network created by the bank’s cultural activities.

The Kandinsky Prize is the most recent example of a German-Russian dialogue that has now lasted 25 years. The long tradition of the bank’s support for this bilateral cultural exchange has also comprised the sponsorship of numerous exhibitions within Russia since 1983. In 1997, the bank presented a large retrospective from its corporate collection titled “Georg Baselitz”, which made the work of this important contemporary German artist accessible for the first time to a broader Russian public. In cooperation with important institutions such as the State Hermitage Museum and the Puschkin Museum, two extensive thematic exhibitions from the Deutsche Bank Collection were shown in St. Petersburg and Moscow in 2002 and 2004/2005. “Amazons of the Avant-Garde”, a touring exhibition (1999-2000) conceived by the Guggenheim Foundation that focussed on the modern art of Russian female artists, premiered at the Deutsche Guggenheim in Berlin. With the support of Deutsche Bank, it was subsequently shown in the Guggenheim museum branches around the world as well as in the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow.

The Kandinsky Prize is the second high calibre award for contemporary art that Deutsche Bank has co-initiated and significantly sponsored, following the Polish art prize “Views”, which will be awarded for the third time in Warsaw this year. Deutsche Bank was honoured by Poland’s Ministry of Culture and National Heritage as a “Patron of Culture 2006” for its commitment to “Views”.