Michelangelo Pistoletto won the 2013 Praemium Imperiale for painting.
The other winners of this prestigious award are Antony Gormley for sculpture, David Chipperfield for Architecture, Plácido Domingo for music and Francis Ford Coppola for theater / cinema. 
The artists are rewarded for their achievements, because of the influence they exert on the art world at the international level and for their contribution to the world community.

Each of the five winners received a prize of 15 million yen (about 117,000 Euros), a diploma and a medal conferred by the Honorary Patron of the Japan Art Association, Prince Hitachi, during the awards ceremony held in Tokyo on October 16, 2013.

"As an italian artist – he said – I see a cultural specularity between the history of Japan, in which we find the roots and the path of civilization in the East, and the history of the italian peninsula, which has contributed to the development of the western regions of the planet . Although in a different way, in fact, both the countries have fed and developed a strong spiritual feeling." "We live in this time – said Pistoletto – a historic transition that is unprecedented, as to the progress of scientific and technological achievements is opposed to the process of consumption of the planet. The vision of a new perspective on the world is needed, and this vision is generated starting from the commitment of art and culture as happened at the time of the Italian Renaissance. I think that art can inspire current human society feelings and practices which open new paths for its own future. The Praemium Imperiale assumes, therefore, a value more than ever significant, as it assigns to the aesthetics and ethics of art a leading role in society."

This year, on the occasion of the 25th edition of the Praemium, the awards ceremony has been preceded by a special hearing in the presence of the Emperor and Empress of Japan.

 

 

The Praemium Imperiale, now in its twenty-fifth edition, is the most important art prize in the world. It is awarded in five disciplines: painting, sculpture, architecture, music, theater / cinema and gives an international reputation in the field of art equal to that of the Nobel Prizes in science.

Among the previous winners: Claudio Abbado, Gae Aulenti, Ingmar Bergman, Luciano Berio, Cecco Bonanotte, Leonard Bernstein, Peter Brook, Anthony Caro, Enrico Castellani, Christo e Jeanne-Claude, Federico Fellini, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Norman Foster, Frank Gehry, Jean-Luc Godard, David Hockney, Willem de Kooning, Akira Kurosawa, Sophia Loren, Umberto Mastroianni, Mario Merz, Renzo Piano, Maurizio Pollini, Arnaldo Pomodoro, Robert Rauschenberg, Mstislav Rostropovich, Ravi Shankar, Giuliano Vangi.