Felix Lehner to receive the Prix Meret Oppenheim 2025
The Federal Office of Culture is awarding the Prix Meret Oppenheim to outstanding Swiss art practitioners for the 25th time since it was founded in 2001. At the recommendation of the Federal Art Commission, the prizes for the 2025 edition will go to Felix Lehner, Pamela Rosenkranz and Miroslav Šik. Together with the winners of the Swiss Art Awards, the prizewinners will be honoured on June 16, 2025 in Basel.
Felix Lehner
On the site of a former textile dyeing plant in the Sitter Valley on the outskirts of St. Gallen stands an international centre for art and production. It comprises the Kunstgiesserei St. Gallen, the Sitterwerk Foundation and the Kesselhaus Josephsohn. The remarkable feature of this place, with its unpretentious atmosphere, lies in the juxtaposition of traditional crafts and state-of-the-art technologies, artistic engagement and exceptional material knowledge. It offers a unique combination of concentration and stimulating exchange. This organism – a kind of contemporary and future-oriented builder’s hut – has grown up over the years and is in large part the work of Felix Lehner (b. 1960 in St. Gallen). It contains everything from a vibrant production operation to an art library, a material archive, workrooms for guest artists and presentation spaces. Today, some 100 specialists from a range of professions work closely together in the various fields with artists from around the world.
When Felix Lehner opened his own art foundry in Beinwil am See in 1983, he was 22 years old. The realisation that he wanted to cast works of art came to him while he was still at school. Because there was no training in that discipline available at the time, and he had absolutely no desire to go into industry, he initially opted for an apprenticeship as a bookseller. Thereafter, he learnt the art of casting and its theoretical principles largely on his own, save for a year and a half working as an assistant in an art foundry. The art foundry moved to St. Gallen in 1994, and today Felix Lehner presides over a company employing some 80 people as well as a subsidiary in Shanghai. The often unconventional production methods are developed by Felix Lehner and his dedicated team working closely in a kind of alliance with the commissioning artists.
An especially prominent member of this creative conglomerate is the sculptor Hans Josephsohn (1920–2012). He and Lehner became both collaborators and friends, based on the latter’s groundbreaking encounter with Josephsohn’s work while training as a bookseller in the 1970s. Indeed, the first bronze cast at Lehner’s foundry was a relief by Josephsohn. Opened in 2004, the Kesselhaus Josephsohn is an exhibition space, gallery and archive for Josephsohn’s estate, and operates in close synergy with the foundry. The same applies to the Sitterwerk Foundation, established in 2006 and comprising an art library, material archive and workroom building. These complementary and fertile cross-pollinations between book, material, dynamic order and active engagement with issues of sustainability are appreciated not only by artists, but also by researchers, museums and architects. A seemingly utopian concept has evolved into an important venue for culture and society.
