Art prize-winning works

Photos of the Art Prize Winners

Preisträger Siegfried Luffler, Katerina Belkina, Jens Pollak

Award winner Katerina Belkina with patron Heinrich Prince of Hanover

Award winner Jens Pollak with patron Heinrich Prince of Hanover

Award winner Siegfried Luffler with patron Heinrich Prince of Hanover

Art Prize Winners’ Works 2024/25

Painting, Sculpture, Photography/Digital Art.

Balloons, Painting, Jens Pollak, Großpostwitz, Saxony

Jens Pollak wins the GERMANY ART PRIZE in the painting category with his painting “Luftballons” (Balloons). His work impresses with its lightness and depth: balloons as a symbol of letting go, childhood, transience – and small moments of happiness. Pollak succeeds in creating a visual language that is quiet and yet full of expression. The colors and composition seem familiar and yet dreamlike and distant. The jury particularly praised his ability to create emotional resonance from a simple motif – without pathos, but with great clarity. “I didn’t think it would work right away,” said the artist. But “Luftballons” strikes a chord with the spirit of the times: quiet, poetic, sincere – and that is precisely where its power lies.

Greeting the rising star, photography-digital art, Katerina Belkina, Werder, Brandenburg

In “Greeting the Rising Star,” Katerina Belkina blends reality and staging into a poetic visual world. A figure stands at the center of a surreal composition—surrounded by silence, light, and space—as if she were part of another cosmos, on the threshold of something new. The jury was impressed by Belkina’s ability to achieve a strong emotional effect with minimal means. Her painterly, cinematic visual language tells of new beginnings, inner strength, and the beauty of imperfection. For our mind is a universe unto itself. It collects fragments of everyday life and shapes them into new worlds—imaginary landscapes of emotions, dreams, and thoughts. In this timeless sphere, new perspectives emerge, a planet in the hand – a being of hope and fear. Belkina’s work is a quiet plea for joie de vivre, overcoming boundaries, and focusing on the essential: the moment in the here and now.

In focus, Sculpture, Siegfried Luffler, Ilshofen, Baden-Württemberg

Siegfried Luffler’s work “Im Fokus” (In Focus) takes a critical look at the power of modern search engines and their algorithms. In an age where digital systems know us down to the last detail, the work raises questions about control, transparency, and privacy. “I know where you live, what you read, what you love, what you think.” The language is direct, almost intrusive. The work speaks in the voice of the machine that seems to know everything about us: consumer behavior, political views, preferences, social environment, even our perfume. But then comes the reversal: “And you know about me.” A moment of reflection. Who is actually the subject here, who is the object? Who is observing—and who is being observed? Luffler combines technical precision with socially critical expressiveness. The combination of traditional material (oak) and modern technology (acrylic) creates an exciting contrast that transfers our digital reality into the physical world. A work that provokes, reflects—and makes you think.