Marian Goodman Gallery congratulates Maurizio Cattelan for receiving the 2026 Preis der Nationalgalerie.

This honor recognizes one of the most influential contemporary artists, who will be represented in Germany for the first time with a solo exhibition. His works, which move between sculpture, installation, and conceptual practice, are characterized by sharp humor, bitter seriousness, and a profound reflection on social structures. The National Gallery Prize exhibition will open at the Neue Nationalgalerie during Berlin Art Week in September 2026.

Since the early 1990s, Maurizio Cattelan (born 1960 in Padua) has been one of the most influential voices in international art. His iconic works—including “La Nona Ora” (1999), a figure of Pope John Paul II struck by a meteorite; “Him” (2001), a praying schoolboy with the face of Adolf Hitler; and “Untitled” (2003), an animatronic sculpture referencing the protagonist of Günter Grass’s novel “The Tin Drum”—demonstrate how Cattelan harnesses the potential of shock, disquiet, and moral ambiguity to raise central questions of our time: guilt, responsibility, power, and collective trauma. Cattelan’s artistic practice is permeated by an aesthetic of “comic existentialism”—a fusion of humor and tragedy, irony and profundity that makes his work both accessible and profoundly unsettling. With this exhibition, Maurizio Cattelan returns to Berlin, where he co-curated the 4th Berlin Biennale in 2006.