The artist Rosa Baptista is the winner of the FLAD Drawing Award 2024 – an initiative of FLAD, in partnership with Drawing Room Lisboa -, and will receive a monetary prize of 20 thousand euros. The announcement was made at Drawing Room Lisboa, where an exhibition with works by the ten finalists of the Prize was also held.

The announcement was made this Saturday at the National Society of Fine Arts, in Lisbon, where until October 27 the Drawing Room Lisboa, a contemporary art fair dedicated to drawing, will be held. The FLAD Drawing Award, worth 20 thousand euros, was awarded in what is the 7th edition of Drawing Room Lisboa, after about 200 applications and 10 finalist artists selected: Bárbara Fonte, Carla Rebelo, Carlos Mensil, the duo Daniel Moreira and Rita Castro Neves, Diogo Pimentão, Gonçalo Sena, Maria Condado, Mariana Barrote, Priscila Fernandes and Rosa Baptista. In the opinion of Monica Careaga, Director of Drawing Room Lisboa, “Rosa Baptista’s drawings continue a long tradition of critical analysis of reality through drawing, constantly demonstrating its power to move and denounce. In addition, they present an effective, spontaneous and attractive formalization, in which colors, texts and characters create a world of their own, marked by both fun and ferocity”. For Nuno Nunes-Ferreira, President of the Jury of the FLAD Drawing Award, “without ever moving away from the place of art, Rosa Baptista’s work surprises by the mastery of the use of comics in an unsettling critical and ironic humor to relevant social and political issues of today’s society”. The winner of the 2024 edition of the FLAD Drawing Award was announced this Saturday at Drawing Room Lisboa, a fair that is once again associated with the realization of this initiative and in which works by the 10 finalists of this edition of the award are exhibited. Before Rosa Baptista, the artists distinguished with the Prize were Pedro Tropa, Maria Capelo and Carla Filipe.

About the winner

Rosa Baptista (Lisbon, 1980) is a visual artist who lives and works between Lisbon and Santa Maria, in the Azores. His work explores existential questions, presenting artistic creation as an attempt to postpone the inevitability of death. His work is characterized by the combination of elements of History with pop culture references, often integrating phrases and words that are intertwined with the drawings. The expressive use of color is also a constant mark in his works. Baptista is a co-founder and member of the Pizz Buin collective, founded in 2005, known for its performative and experimental approach. The group is strongly influenced by the artistic avant-garde of the 1960s and 1970s, using criticism and humor as the main means of expression.