And, can we see it? Are this year’s participants remarkably wild, escapist, or idealistic? “It is always difficult to find common threads in a group exhibition,” said King Willem-Alexander during his opening speech of the Royal Prize for Painting on Tuesday afternoon in the Palace on Dam Square in Amsterdam. But: “More than half of the fifteen artists look for inspiration in their own immediate world.”
This means that this year of the accompanying exhibition of the Royal Prize also has its own common thread: the reflection on one’s own “near world”, which would receive more emphasis, especially in these times of the turbulence “around AI”. Both King Willem-Alexander and jury chairman Mirjam Westen (Museum Arnhem) mention this as a recurring theme, also with the three winners Gideon van Gameren (1998), Lorian Gwynn (2001) and Dion Rosina (1991), who received this encouragement prize worth 9,000 euros on Tuesday.
‘A Celebration of Unfinished Thoughts’ (2025) by Lorian Gwynn.
Photo Tom Haartsen
Westen puts it in a slightly more complex way than Willem-Alexander: “The majority of entrants create work that is nourished by their inner world of experience, or work that relates to the proximity of their own living environment.” By which she means very specifically: Van Gameren refers in his paintings with titles such as ‘Laskap’ to “his parents’ workshop where campers are repaired”, Gwynn makes dreamy group portraits of her circle of friends, and Rosina zooms in on historical photos and paintings with a partly African background, making the images almost seem like their own memories.
Reflection of the spirit of the times
“Proximity” would connect them, and is that true? In any case, it fits well. Because if there is one thing that the Royal Prize for Painting has been adorning itself with for years, it is the ambition to make a kind of file recording. The prize for young painting talent always aims to be something more than just an incentive prize, it also wants to show where the venerable art form now stands, not only in terms of form, but certainly also in terms of content, as a kind of reflection of the spirit of the times.
The names of previous prize winners, later breakthrough painters such as Jan Toorop (1876), Jan Dibbets (1964) and Natasja Kensmil (1998), whose work subsequently also came to be seen as a kind of reflection on the times, are proudly heard. And painting, as venerable as it is, has also been suitable for this role as a sounding board for centuries. But at the same time, painting has been declared dead quite often during the existence of this prize since 1871. Around 1871, it was photography that was considered the beginning of the end of painting, and now, as the jury states at the beginning of its report, it is the rise of AI that raises such doubts.
‘Drift to the center’ (2025) by Dion Rosina.
Photo Tom Haartsen
Today, this turbulence around AI is also the context in which the paintings are placed. And it will not be surprising: the words for the audience of artists, critics and other members of the art world are almost reassuring. Painting, says Westen, is “alive and alive” even in times of AI. In fact, says King Willem-Alexander: especially in these turbulent times in which AI is undermining old certainties, “our imagination and our creative urge to create” become extra important. And art has the ability, he says, to “bind people together.”
World in confusion
Art as a steadfast pillar in a world in confusion. And indeed: in contrast to previous years in which the ‘broadening’ of the medium seemed to be a conscious criterion, one could now speak of a return to the familiar form. Certainly with the winners, the work has a clear, almost narrative figurative core, with Van Gameren rather in an expressive variant, while Gwynn and Rosina explicitly refer to the approach of old masters, as Gwynn does with the group portraits of Frans Hals.
At the same time, the new painters do reflect on the new times with the old technique. They incorporate new techniques, some of the fifteen participants even use AI to generate their images, or they refer to other current themes, such as origins. Rosina’s work uses the ‘sample culture of hip-hop’, where a portrait of a black woman from 1800 that he reuses suddenly turns out to have a reference to the past of slavery. The images of Van Gameren’s workshop explore “the relationship between his family and himself, and between domesticity and work.” And the portraits of Gwynn’s circle of friends, partly with references to her Indonesian family background, form a kind of beacon “within everything that is happening in the world.”
‘My father’s toe’ (2024) by Gideon van Gameren.
Photo Tom Haartsen
You can call this a reflection on the “near world”, but it is not escapism. The major current themes are addressed, although not emphatically but indirectly, as part of a larger tangle of references. In the new year of the Prize for Painting, a contemplative, slightly melancholic attitude towards the world predominates, in which personal memories and commitments take precedence over explicitly ideological messages.
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