Romāns Korovins receives the Purvītis Prize 2025
A seven-member international jury of art experts has awarded this year’s Purvītis Prize to Latvian artist Romāns Korovins. The prestigious 28,500-euro prize (before taxes) is the most substantial in the Baltic region and is awarded biennially for an outstanding work of art that is evocative of its time, and demonstrates a continuum between the life and spiritual ideals of that era as well as absolute values.
The artist was one of eight finalists, and received the prize for his solo exhibition LET’S DIE TOGETHER.
Photos: Kristīne Madjare
The award was ceremoniously presented on May 23 evening to Romāns Korovins at the Latvian National Museum of Art by Iveta Derkusova, the Deputy Director for Collections at the Latvian National Museum of Art, along with jury members Jānis Zuzāns, the patron of the Purvītis Prize and longstanding benefactor of the LNMA, and Nicolas Bourriaud, French curator and art critic.
The jury session lasted more than five hours. There was a tour of the exhibition and talks with each artist. The jurors then discussed each of the eight exhibitions and came to a decision by voting in two rounds. After the first vote, three leaders emerged. After the second vote, the winner was decided by majority vote.
Members of the jury were:
Astrīda Rogule, art historian, curator of the Contemporary Art Collection of the Latvian National Museum of Art;
Jānis Zuzāns, patron of the Purvītis Prize, and Chairman of the Board of SIA ‘Alfor’;
René Block, gallerist, a German curator who opened his first art gallery in Berlin at the age of 22. In 1967, he was one of the co-founders of the Art Cologne art fair. In 1977, his New York gallery hosted the chrestomathic performance by Joseph Beuys featuring a live coyote that became part of the 20th-century art history. René Block was the director of the Fridericianum (Kassel) and was the founder of Kunsthal 44 Møen in Denmark, where he held the post of artistic director through 2024. Block also curated a number of international art biennials, including the Biennale of Sydney (1990), Istanbul Biennial (1995), Gwangju Biennale (2000) and Belgrade Biennial (2006);
Nicolas Bourriaud, French curator and art critic, art theoretician and writer. He has curated numerous international biennials and exhibitions and was the co-founder and co-director of Palais de Tokyo in Paris (1999–2006), Head of Studies Department at the Ministry of Culture of France (2010–11), Director of École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts (2011–15). Bourriaud was the director of Montpellier Contemporain (MoCo), an institution he created, from 2016 to 2021. He held the posts of Gulbenkian curator for contemporary art at Tate Britain (2007–10), advisor to the founder of the Viktor Pinchuk Foundation and curator of the Istanbul Biennial (2019). Artistic Director of the 15th Gwangju Biennale (2024). He recently founded Radicants, a curatorial cooperative producing exhibitions worldwide;
Rhea Dall, Director and Chief Curator of Overgaden - Institute for Contemporary Art, Copenhagen. She was one of the artistic directors of the Bergen Assembly in 2016 and co-founder of the PRAXES Centre for Contemporary Art in Berlin (2013). Rhea Dall was a curator for Charlottenborg Kunsthal in Copenhagen (2011–13), has worked as a project coordinator for the Danish and Nordic pavilions at the Venice Biennale and taken part in mounting a number of editions of the Berlin Biennale;
Marina Fokidis, independent curator, writer and educator based in Athens, Greece, founder of the Kunsthalle Athena centre for arts (2010–2015) and the South as a State of Mind magazine, Head of the Artistic office in Athens and co-curator of documenta 14 and newly appointed as Director of culture for the region of Attica in Greece;
Vita Liberte, art collector, founder of the VV Foundation.
Romāns Korovins’s exhibition “Let’s Die Together” was described by the jury as “coherent, compelling, and deeply resonant—an exhibition where humour coexists with both joy and sorrow. It raises, with striking clarity, the essential question: what does it mean to be contemporary today?
Though it consists of works painted in an almost classical way, the exhibition invites viewers to pause, to observe with care, and to engage with the subtleties and nuances woven into each piece. Korovin’s work is anything but repetitive; each piece, though modest in scale, forms together with all a minimal, powerful narrative—one that speaks of life and death, and of shared experiences seen through different shades of meaning.
His conceptual approach and the manner in which the works are presented led us, the jury, to recognize a contemporary, challenging, and original vision. It is a fresh engagement with a traditional form—one that urges viewers to reconsider the seemingly trivial, everyday moments that ultimately shape the singular and finite life each of us lives.”
During the exhibition, from April 12 to May 23, visitors voted to choose their favourite.
The Visitor’s Choice went to Luīze Rukšāne. Luīze Rukšāne was nominated for the Purvītis Prize 2025 for her solo exhibition FOLDING LINES.
All eight of the finalists’: Indriķis Ģelzis, Romāns Korovins, Ieva Kraule-Kūna, Inga Meldere and Luīze Nežberte, Luīze Rukšāne, Krišs Salmanis, Elza Sīle, Paula Zvane works can be viewed at the LNMA until June 8, at a special exhibition curated by Daiga Rudzāte and designed by Martiņš Vizbulis.
The Purvītis Prize
The Purvītis Prize was founded as an initiative of the Latvian National Museum of Art with the support of Alfor Ltd. company, the patron of the Purvītis Prize, and in cooperation with the Indie culture project agency in the early 2008. The prize is awarded biennially to an artist or a group of artists rated the highest by a panel of judges. The objective of the Latvian National Museum of Art in founding a new visual arts prize was to gather regular and systematic information about the latest visual arts events in Latvia, promote development of new projects and original ideas, acknowledge the best achievements in Latvian professional visual arts and popularise the success of Latvian artists both in Latvia and abroad.
The first Purvītis Prize (2007/2008) was awarded to Katrīna Neiburga for her video installations Solitude and Topology. The following laureates were Kristaps Ģelzis for his Maybe solo exhibition (2009/2010), Andris Eglītis for his Soil Works solo exhibition (2011/2012), Miķelis Fišers for his Disgrace solo exhibition (2013/2014), Krišs Salmanis, Anna Salmane and Kristaps Pētersons for their Song exhibition (2015/2016), Ieva Epnere for her Sea of Living Memories exhibition (2017/2018), Amanda Ziemele for her Quantum Hair Implants solo exhibition (2019/2020) and Ance Eikena for her solo exhibition Father in Heaven (2021/2022).
