Polish and Latvian Artists Win Top Honours at the Martinsons Award 2025

At the opening night of the Rothko Museum’s autumn exhibition season, out of nearly a thousand submissions worldwide, the top honours of the coveted Martinsons Award 2025 went to artists from Poland and Latvia – Daria Kowalewska, Inese Brants, and Lilija Zeiļa.

Established in memory of Pēteris Martinsons – an outstanding Latvian ceramicist, innovator and educator – the Martinsons Award is the creative axis of the Latvia Ceramics Biennale, a landmark event on the European cultural calendar, renowned for its scale, quality and curatorial vision.

This year’s competition call drew 941 submissions from 69 countries. From these, an international panel of experts selected 80 outstanding pieces for the exhibition. The final cut represents 30 nations and features 23 works by Latvian artists. Reflecting this year’s biennale theme, “From Stardust to Lush Sprouts”, the exhibition embraces the entire spectrum of creative expression – from technically sophisticated compositions that impress with superior craftsmanship and mature conceptual depth, to more experimental forms where clay itself dictates character and rhythm, revealing the poetic qualities in human skill and the material’s organic nature.

Following an on-site review on the eve of the opening, the jury distributed awards in the international and national categories, allocating a prize fund of €20,000.

Winners of the Martinsons Award 2025, International Category

  • Gold: Daria Kowalewska (Poland)
  • Silver: Hanna Miadzvedzeva (Poland); Hyunjin Kim (South Korea)
  • Honourable Mention and Residency Prize: Guglielmo Maggini (Italy); Michał Żesławski (Poland)
  • Honourable Mention: Kimie Ino (Brazil); Valdas Kurklietis (Lithuania/Sweden); Eglė Einikytė-Narkevičienė (Lithuania)

Winners of the Martinsons Award 2025, National Category

  • Gold: Lilija Zeiļa; Inese Brants (Latvia)
  • Honourable Mention and Residency Prize: Elīna Titāne (Latvia)
  • Honourable Mention and Keramserviss Prize: Agate Kalcenaua; Laima Lauriņa (Latvia)

The international jury included Aivars Baranovskis (Latvia), artist and curator of the Latvia Ceramics Biennale; Claudia Casali (Italy), art historian and Director of the International Museum of Ceramics in Faenza; Kristine Michael (India), independent curator and researcher; Leeji Choi (South Korea), curator at the Gyeonggi Museum of Contemporary Ceramic Art; and Weronika Surma (Poland), artist, lecturer at the E. Geppert Academy of Art and Design in Wrocław, and organiser of the International Ceramics Sculpture Triennale Poland ICST.

Founded in 2016 and organised by the Latvian Centre for Contemporary Ceramics in cooperation with the Rothko Museum, the Latvia Ceramics Biennale has become one of the most important and artistically significant ceramics events in Europe, bringing Latvia wide international recognition.

The biennale’s exhibition programme continues in Daugavpils, Cēsis, and Liepāja, where the Baltic contemporary ceramics exhibition “Windless” will open on 12 September.

The fifth Latvia Ceramics Biennale is supported by the State Culture Capital Foundation of Latvia, Daugavpils City Council, the Lighton International Artist Exchange Program, and Keramserviss.

Publicity images: Martinsons Award 2025 at the Rothko Museum (photographed by Didzis Grodzs)