As part of a new partnership between the fine arts school Beaux-Arts Paris and the Sarr Collection , we are pleased to announce the winners of the SARR Prize 2021. Three current Beaux-Arts Paris students are honored each year with this award, which both recognizes excellence in a body of artistic work and helps young artists in their professionalization process. The winners of the 2021 prize were announced during the first edition of CRUSH (Feb 3-14, 2021) in the historical Cours Vitrée of the Palais des Études in Paris. CRUSH is an annual art exhibition open to the public that intends to promote the young artists of Les Beaux-Arts Paris to art professionals, gallery owners, curators, art critics and museum directors. The selection jury for the Sarr Prize was composed of: Osei Bonsu, curator at the Tate Modern, Julien Creuzet, artist, Stéphanie Cristello, Chicago curator and art critic, Jean de Loisy, director of the Beaux-Arts de Paris, Cathia Lawson-Hall and Philippe Hall, Parisian art collectors, and Catherine and Mamadou-Abou Sarr, founders of the SARR collection and Prize.
The winning artists, Pierre-Alexandre Savriacouty, Victoire Inchauspé and Pier Sparta will each receive a €5,000 grant. Among them, Pierre-Alexandre Savriacouty will also benefit from a one-month residency in 2022 initiated and supported by the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in Chicago. With $4,000, this research residency and creation will end with an exhibition in Chicago.
Pierre-Alexandre Savriacouty born in 1993 is a student at L'école nationale supérieure des Beaux-arts in Paris, whose work explores issues related to disappearance, spirituality, the living, remains, industry, and survivalism as well as the duality between matter and nothingness.
Pier Sparta began his studies at Beaux-Arts-Toulouse and continues his work today at the Tatiana Trouvé workshop at Beaux-Arts Paris. It is through a sculptural medium in human likeness that Sparta developed his visual language. Figurative sculpture for Sparta became a way to evoke the human in his psyche and in the physical spaces tied to the environments through which he’s moved.
Victoire Inchauspé studies at École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts. Her artistic practice is focused on volume. Victoire works with various materials such as metal, wood, glass, wax, ceramics, and ash.
The SARR Prize funded by the SARR Collection will present three awards annually to current Les Beaux-Arts Paris students for excellence in a body of artistic work. The prize supports the vision and philosophy of the Sarr Collection, namely: "Recognizing the beauty and impact of the arts as a vector of societal transformation". As Chicagoan patrons of the arts, Catherine and Mamadou-Abou Sarr believe that it is critical to support and empower young artists at an early stage in their practices. The Prize is juried by a group of distinguished curators, artists, and private collectors with overlapping expertise and passion in visual arts.
Beaux-Arts de Paris is a place of artistic instruction and experimentation, exhibition, and conservation of historical and contemporary collections, as well as a publishing house. Heir to the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture, founded in the 17th century by Louis XIV, Beaux-Arts de Paris is a public institution under the responsibility of the French Ministry of Culture. Its first mission is to educate and train students planning to devote themselves to high-level artistic creation. Beaux-Arts de Paris occupies an essential place on the world stage of art and culture. In accordance with the educational principles that have always prevailed in the School, the course is studio-based under the guidance of renowned artists and is supplemented by a range of theoretical and technical teaching. It provides students with the fundamental elements they need to develop and sustain their personal artistic undertakings, as well as a full understanding of what is at issue in making art today. Beaux-Arts de Paris is a member of Université Paris Sciences & Lettres (PSL), a community of 25 prestigious Parisian educational institutions.
