American sculptor wins Swiss prize

The minimalist American sculptor Carl Andre has been awarded the Roswitha Haftmann prize for 2011.

The award, worth SFr150,000 ($143,898), will be presented to the artist at the Zurich Kunsthaus in the spring of 2011.

In its announcement on Tuesday, the Zurich-based foundation said Andre had “lent new meaning to sculpture in the second half of the 20th century”.

The American choreographer Trisha Brown will receive a special prize of SFr75,000 ($71,949). According to the foundation, she is considered the “inventor of post-modern dance”. The foundation said the award was being made for “an incomparable interdisciplinary oeuvre of outstanding quality, developed over the course of decades”.

The prize was initiated by Roswitha Haftmann, who died in 1998. It has been awarded every three years since 2001 to a living artist who has created an oeuvre of an outstanding quality.

It is the best endowed art award in Europe.

swissinfo.ch and agencies