From 5 November 2021 until 9 January 2022, new works by the three artists nominated for the 'Bernardine de Neeve Award 2021' can be seen in Museum JAN. The three contenders are Jenny Ritzenhoff, Judith Roux and Nataliya Vladychko.

Bernadine de Neeve Award
Bernardine de Neeve (1915-1996) was the first chief curator of arts and crafts at Museum Boijmans van Beuningen in Rotterdam and was responsible for the museum’s collection policy. She was particularly fond of glass art and was co-founder of the ‘Association of Friends of Modern Glass'. As a tribute to Bernardine de Neeve, this association initiated the 'Bernardine de Neeve Award' in 1990 to promote the artistic development of glass artists from the Netherlands and Belgium.

This year the award will once more be presented to an artist who has an innovative and surprising approach to glass and who promotes this artistically. Glass is a visual material that logically forms an essential part of the artist’s entire body of work. The jury also pays attention to diversity of expression and techniques as well as innovative working methods. The award ceremony will take place on 21 November in Museum JAN.

Jenny Ritzenhoff
Jenny Ritzenhoff (1973) grew up in Germany and studied Architecture and Urban Planning. She eventually chose art and in 2013 graduated from the Glass Department of the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam.

Ritzenhoff is fascinated by glass and has explored various processing techniques, including glassblowing and pâte de verre (glass paste). She first makes models from other materials, which she then translates into glass, playing with shape, light and colour. She claims that her work explores 'the influence of the past on the present, staying and disappearing, emerging and fading away'.

Judith Roux
Judith Roux (1992) graduated from the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in 2018 and is now the temporary coordinator of the famous Glass Department of the academy.

Roux primarily uses the so-called burner technique, in which she uses a small burner to melt transparent rods of glass together in a kind of stairway shape. This results in a fragile, poetic structure that may represent a landscape or buildings in simplified forms. Despite the minimalist visual language, Roux's work is able to fill a space in a monumental way. Light and transparency play a major role.

Nataliya Vladychko
Vladychko (1977) graduated from the art academy in L'viv (Ukraine) in 1997, where she came under the spell of the material glass. She constructed her graduation work in stained glass and later specialised in various techniques such as brandishing and has mastered the craft to perfection.

Her works of art are interpretations of nature. On the basis of drawings, she studies the germinating plant. In glass, however, each model is given its own identity by means of interesting colour combinations and different movements. As a result of her personal touch, these are not models of nature, but an imagination and a metaphor for growth and development.

The Bernardine de Neeve Award is an incentive prize for contemporary glass art initiated by the 'Association of Friends of Modern Glass'. On November 21, the winner of this prestigious prize was unveiled in Museum JAN: Judith Roux!