Brazilian artist Anna Bella Geiger has won the 2026 Velázquez Prize for Visual Arts, worth 100,000 euros. The jury recognised her experimentation across media and her influence as a teacher. Her seventy-year career spans printmaking, painting, photography, video and installation, with work held in major museums and shown at the São Paulo, Venice and Istanbul biennials.
Brazilian artist Anna Bella Geiger has won Spain’s 2026 Velázquez Prize for Visual Arts. The award carries 100,000 euros. The jury highlighted her continuing experimentation across artistic disciplines and her commitment to teaching, which it said had influenced several generations. It also recognised her use of artistic practice to think about history and the present.[1], [2]
Born in Rio de Janeiro in 1933, Geiger works in printmaking, painting, photography, video, installation and artists’ books. She studied Anglo-Germanic languages at the city’s National Faculty of Philosophy and trained in Fayga Ostrower’s studio between 1949 and 1953. Later she studied art and sociology with Hannah Levy-Deinhard at the New School for Social Research in New York.[1]
Her exhibition history includes the São Paulo, Venice and Istanbul biennials. Works by Geiger are held by Madrid’s Reina Sofía museum, London’s Tate Modern and Victoria and Albert Museum, and New York’s Museum of Modern Art. The jury described a seventy-year career that has repeatedly questioned conventional ways of validating art. Her work has also appeared in the group exhibitions Radical Software: Women, Art & Computing in Vienna and Latin America in Paris.[1]
