The QSPA Inspirational Award (previously the Kjell Nupen Memorial Grant) is awarded to a Nordic artist who is currently pursuing, or has recently completed, their art education and whose artistic practice makes active use of printmaking as an important means of expression. The grant is a collaboration between master printer Bill Goldston at Universal Limited Art Editions (ULAE) and the HM Queen Sonja Art Foundation. In previous years, the board of the Foundation has served as the jury. In 2022, the jury comprised of HM Queen Sonja (Chair of the board, QSPA), Anne Hilde Neset (Director of Kunstnernes Hus), Wenche Volle (Senior Curator at the National Museum, Oslo) and Karin Augusta Nogva (Chair of the board, Norske Grafikere). The artists are nominated by leading Nordic art and printmaking organisations. Presented every other year, the QSPA Inspirational Award comprises a grant and an educational stay at ULAE’s renowned printmaking workshop.
ULAE is a fine print publisher located in Long Island, New York, established in 1957 by Tatyana Grosman. Passionate about lithography, Grosman worked tirelessly to engage notable artists as collaborators — including Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Lee Bontecou, Barnett Newman, Helen Frankenthaler, Jim Dine, Cy Twombly, and many others. By the mid-1960s, artist-printer collaborations at ULAE, gave rise to an explosion of contemporary printed art. By the 1980s, a new generation of artists had begun to work at ULAE, already aware of the aesthetic possibilities offered by printmaking and eager to experiment with its myriad techniques. Painters Terry Winters, Susan Rothenberg, and Carroll Dunham and sculptors Kiki Smith and Richard Tuttle all found new artistic outlets, collaborating with master craftsmen at ULAE.
The winners of the QSPA Inspirational Award, in collaboration with master printers at ULAE, follow the legacy of these artists, many of whom became prolific printmakers and who made the medium integral to their overall practice. This years exhibition will show works produced by Meerke Verterli, which led to her nomination as winner of the QSPA Inspirational Award 2022. Previous winners from 2020 and 2017, Anna Pajak and Julie Ebbing respectively, display works based on their residencies at ULAE. And the first award-winner, Adam Saks shows re-workings of the prints he produced during his time at Atelje Larsen in Helsingborg, where Kjell Nupen noticed his work and subsequently suggested him as a nominee for The Queen Sonja Print Award. Saks went on to win the Kjell Nupen Memorial Grant in 2015, an award created in memory of Nupen who had passed away a few months earlier.
Now named the QSPA Inspirational Award, the grant and educational stay at ULAE support emerging artists, providing the means and space where they can continue to develop their careers, experiment with a range of techniques and/or expand their oeuvre. ULAE acts as the main patron of this award, alongside the Queen Sonja Print Award Foundation.
This time-honoured practice of artistic collaboration, quality, and technical experimentation has continued to keep ULAE in the forefront of international, contemporary printmaking for over 65 years. QSPA works proudly with ULAE as a partner and patron of the QSPA Inspirational Award, continuing it’s aim to recognise and support talent and inspire emerging artists to establish themselves on the international art scene.