This morning the Japan Art Association and Lord Patten of Barnes, Praemium Imperiale’s International Advisor in the UK, have announced the recipients of the 2025 Praemium Imperiale Awards:
Sculpture: Marina ABRAMOVIC (79, Serbia)
Painting: Peter DOIG (66, United Kingdom)
Theatre/Film: Anne Teresa DE KEERSMAEKER (65, Belgium)
Music: András SCHIFF (71, Hungary/United Kingdom)
Architecture: Eduardo SOUTO DE MOURA (72, Portugal)
Each Laureate receives an honorarium of 15 million Yen (c. £77,000). The awards are given by the Japan Art Association under the honorary patronage of His Imperial Highness Prince Hitachi, young brother to the Emperor Emeritus of Japan.
Lord Patten has additionally chosen The National Youth Theatre of Great Britain as the recipient of the 5 million Yen (c. £25,000) Grant for Young Artists.
Lord Patten said,
“All five laureates this year have close ties to the UK. They all share a love of ‘making’ – whereby concept and craft come together to create artistry of the highest order. I am also delighted that the Japan Art Association will celebrate our very own National Youth Theatre – who will be celebrating their 70th anniversary next year and who has produced outstanding work as well as provided pivotal support for generations of young actors as they transition into an often precarious profession.”
Widely recognised as a leading figure in the ‘New Figurative Painting’ movement, Peter Doig’s painting career spans over three decades. Born in Edinburgh in 1959, Doig spent his early years in Trinidad and Canada before studying in London at St Martin’s School of Art and Chelsea School of Art. His paintings are known for their evocative blend of memory, dreamlike imagery and painterly innovation, drawing inspiration from photographs, postcards, films and personal experiences. Since rising to international prominence in the early 1990s, he has held a professorship at Kunstakademie Düsseldorf (2004 – 2017), was nominated for the Turner Prize (1994) and received the Wolfgang Hahn Prize (2008) as well as had major exhibitions held at Tate Britain (2008), the Fondation Beyeler (2014-5), the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo (2020). In 2023-24, Doig curated Reflections of the Century at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. On 3 October 2025, Doig will open House of Music at the Serpentine in London. The exhibition of new and recent paintings will present Doig’s work alongside a sound installation for the first time, highlighting the significance of other disciplines to the artist’s practice, including music and film.
Born in Belgrade, Serbia, during Yugoslavia’s communist regime, Marina Abramovic is a trailblazer of performance art redefining the relationship between artist and audience. Currently living in New York, Abramovi?’s work remains thought-provoking, sometimes shocking, and continues to attract an audience of young and old. Abramovic has exhibited extensively across the world, from the Venice Biennale, Documenta, and the Centre Pompidou to solo retrospectives in London, Berlin, and Stockholm. Her video installation Balkan Baroque earned her the Golden Lion at the 1997 Venice Biennale and in 2005. Abramovi?’s major solo show at London’s Royal Academy of Arts (2023), which is set to tour Europe through 2026, made her the first woman in the RA’s 250-year history to occupy the entire gallery space. In October 2025, she will present Balkan Erotic Epic at Aviva Studios in Manchester. A four-hour ritual brought to life by over 70 performers, dancers, musicians and singers, Balkan Erotic Epic will explore eroticism, spirituality and traditions of Abramovi?’s homeland.
Music Laureate, Hungarian-born Sir András Schiff, is one of the most distinguished pianists of our time. Schiff’s repertoire spans a broad range of composers, including Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Bartók, and Janá?ek. In 1999, he founded Cappella Andrea Barca, a chamber orchestra of international soloists and friends, with whom he works closely. He also collaborates with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe and, since 2018, has served as Associate Artist of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, performing on period instruments. Schiff was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2014, awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal Philharmonic Society, the Grand Cross of Merit of Germany, and the Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and Art in 2024. On 23 August 2025, Schiff returns to the BBC Proms to perform Bach’s The Art of Fugue at the Royal Albert Hall. He has three further London appearances this autumn at the Wigmore Hall.
Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker is a leading figure in the world of contemporary dance; as dancer, choreographer and founder of her own dance company, Rosas, as well as a guiding figure in the establishing the school PARTS (Performing Arts Research and Training Studios). Born in a rural town in Belgium, De Keersmaeker created her first choreographic work, Asch in 1980 but it was Fase, created in 1982 on her return to Belgium, that announced her arrival as a major new talent. In 1983, she founded Rosas—named after the Latin word for “roses”—and premiered her breakthrough piece Rosas danst Rosas. This debut revealed her distinctive choreographic style, marked by rigorously structured movement and repetition. At Festival d’Avignon this summer, De Keersmaeker and choreographer and dancer Solal Mariotte embrace Jacques Brel’s songs in an intense duet inspired by the poetry and the extraordinary stage presence and gestural expressivity of the Belgian artist.
Born in Porto, the Portuguese architect Eduardo Souto de Moura is celebrated for his exquisite use of materials—granite, wood, marble, brick, steel, concrete—as well as his unexpected use of colour. The practice is internationally recognisable for its strong forms and sculptural masses, as seen in iconic projects such as the Braga Stadium (2004) and Casa das Histórias Paula Rego (2008) – as well as recent works including the careful transformation of a historic Portuguese farming village into a hotel (São Lourenço do Barrocal, 2017), whose process and finish resonates with many of Souto de Moura’s previous restoration projects such as the Convento Das Bernardas (2012). Souto de Moura won the Pritzker Prize in 2011, the Wolf Prize in 2013, the Golden Lion for best project on show at the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2018 and the Arnold W. Brunner Memorial Prize in 2019. He has previously designed the Serpentine Pavilion, in collaboration with Álvaro Siza, in 2005 and exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts as part of the Sensing Spaces exhibition in 2014.
In addition to the Praemium Imperiale Awards, the National Youth Theatre (NYT) is selected for the 2025 Grant for Young Artists. Founded in London in 1956 by Michael Croft and Kenneth Spring, the National Youth Theatre is the world’s first youth theatre. It is well known for nurturing young talent, responsible for renowned actors such as Daniel Craig, Helen Mirren and Colin Firth. Under the artistic direction of Paul Roseby (since 2004), NYT has evolved into an organisation that encourages young people from all backgrounds to gather and use theatre as a tool for social change. Each year, over 10,000 young people audition to take part in masterclasses and free intensive courses for those aged 11 to 30. As NYT approaches its 70th anniversary in 2026, it is planning a ‘Global Watch Party,’ a collaborative event with youth arts organisations worldwide, using innovative digital technology to amplify the voices and stories of the next generation.
Since 1989, the Praemium Imperiale Awards have been given annually in the categories of Painting, Sculpture, Architecture, Music and Theatre/Film; covering fields of achievement not represented by the Nobel Prizes. The Laureates are selected from a list submitted by six International Advisors to the Japan Art Association. In order to maintain the Awards’ mandate to select candidates who have made a major international impact in their particular field, the International Advisors for the Awards and their committees are committed to looking beyond their own national boundaries for ground-breaking artists to recommend to the Japan Art Association.
Previous British winners include David Hockney, Mona Hatoum, Anish Kapoor, Antony Gormley, Richard Long, Bridget Riley, Norman Foster, Richard Rogers, David Chipperfield, Judi Dench, Anthony Caro and Tony Cragg.
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