Winner of Art Prize Donates Money to Scholarship Program.

South African artist Marlene Dumas has been named the eleventh winner of the Saxon Academy of the Arts’s Hans Theo Richter Prize for Drawing and Graphic Arts, a biennial award that recognizes achievements in the visual arts. During a ceremony honoring the artist on November 23, Dumas announced that she would donate her entire $23,000 prize to a scholarship program at Dresden’s Kupferstich-Kabinett in support of young artists.

“Marlene Duma’s work is complex, yet fundamentally communicative,” juror Ulrich Bischoff, a former director of the Galerie Neue Meister, said. Dumas has a close relationship with the city of Dresden, which is the capital of Saxony and the home of the Academy. She designed an altarpiece that was consecrated earlier this year for the city’s St. Anne’s Church, and her art is currently featured alongside works by the late artist Käthe Kollwitz in an exhibition at the Kupferstich-Kabinett.

Founded by the widow of German painter and graphic-artist Hans Theo Richter in 1998, the award has one of the largest monetary prizes for drawing and graphic art in Germany. It is awarded by the Saxon Academy of the Arts in cooperation with the Hildegard and Hans Theo Richter Foundation, as well as the Kupferstich-Kabinett, which is part of the Dresden State Art Collection.