LOEWE FOUNDATION Craft Prize 2025
From 30 May to 29 June 2025
Opening hours and location
Monday: 12.00 - 16.00 (free access).
From Tuesday to Friday and Sunday: 10.00 - 19.00.
Saturday: 10.00 - 23.00 (Thyssen Nights: 14, 21 and 28 June free access from 21.00 to 23.00).
Temporary exhibition rooms level -1.
The 30 works selected for the LOEWE FOUNDATION Craft Prize shortlist will go on display at Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum in Madrid from 30 May to 29 June 2025. Many of the works in this year’s shortlist innovatively transpose ancient craft techniques from their traditional medium to new materials, such as basketry to clay and weaving on the loom to metal, while elsewhere traditional motifs have been reimagined and reinterpreted.
Oral tradition, ritual and knowledge passed through generations are expressed in works that pay reverence to this rich inheritance. While in other works, the artist has forged their own path, creating unique sculptural forms that offer a new direction. Some of these new forms conjure a sense of whimsy and the fantastical, while in others, the artist’s hand is felt more strongly through a gestural treatment of surface.
This year’s finalists were chosen by a panel of experts from over 4,600 submissions by artisans representing 133 countries and regions. The 30 finalists, representing 18 countries and regions, work across a range of mediums including ceramics, woodwork, textiles, furniture, paper, glass, metal, jewellery and lacquer.
A tribute to LOEWE’s beginnings as a collective craft workshop in 1846, the annual Craft Prize was launched by the LOEWE FOUNDATION in 2016 to celebrate excellence, artistic merit, and innovation in modern craftsmanship. The award aims to acknowledge the importance of craft in today’s culture and to recognise artists whose talent, vision and will to innovate, promise to set a new standard for the future.
Kunimasa Aoki, winner of the Craft Prize 2025
After meeting in Madrid for their deliberations, the Craft Prize jury has selected Kunimasa Aoki as the winner of this year's edition, for his work Realm of Living Things 19, 2024, an anamorphic terracotta sculpture that explores “the ways in which the material cracks and distorts when force is applied”.
Fascinated by the gradual layering of time in the natural world, Aoki captures in his process how a series of tiny forces come together to create something more robust. The artist uses innovative techniques, stacking, shaping and compressing thin coils of clay in layers, pushing their material possibilities to the limit. The shape and surface of the piece transmit vitality, despite appearing to be an ancestral work, inviting us to a transformative journey from a multidimensional perspective.
Special mentions
In addition, the jury has awarded two special mentions. One goes to Nifemi Marcus-Bello for his work TM Bench with Bowl, 2023 while another special mention goes to Studio Sumakshi Singh, by Monument, 2024.
