Sikkens Prize
The Sikkens Prize is one of the Netherlands’ oldest independent art prizes. It is awarded once every few years to individuals or institutions that are considered to have made a special contribution to the field of colour.
Established in 1959, previous winners include Gerrit Rietveld (1960), Le Corbusier (1963), Donald Judd (1993) and Bridget Riley (2013). The most recent winner of the Sikkens Prize (2017) is Dutch designer Hella Jongerius.
The majority of the recipients have been individual artists and architects known for their groundbreaking use of colour, but the Sikkens Foundation does not restrict itself to the visual arts and architecture. Instead, it places colour – which is, after all, a universal phenomenon – in a broader context. This is made clear by the fact that the Prize was also awarded to the hippie movement (1970), de Rijksdienst (National office) for the IJsselmeerpolders (1979), filmmaker Ettore Scola (1983), the city cleaning department of Paris (1995) and Dutch retail company HEMA (2004).
