Grayson Perry is the first British visual artist to win the prestigious Erasmus award in over 50 years.
The award was previously given to sculptor Henry Moore in 1968, who donated half of his prize money to the charity SPACE.
The award is the equivalent of the Nobel prize for creatives and is given to an institution of individual was has made an “exceptional contribution to the humanities, the social sciences or the arts.”
It comes with €150,000 worth of prize money and a medal with text by Erasmus.
The prize was founded in 1958 by the Dutch Prince Bernhard, at a time when Europe was increasingly optimistic and untied.
Of the award, Perry said: “I always love a medal, I’ll probably design an outfit to match.”
He continued: “It feels like a validation of something that has crept up on me over the years, which is that my career is about making difficult ideas accessible.”
This year’s prize was awarded around the theme “the power of the image in the digital era”.
Judges responded to the selection, stating that: “At a time when we are constantly bombarded with images, Perry has developed a unique visual language demonstrating that art belongs to everybody and should not be an elitist affair.”
Perry is a known opposer of Brexit, and said that he had been “fascinated by the socio-political fallout from that very simple question and for me, as a kind of amateur socio-anthropologist, what Brexit has shown me about my country has been fascinating, appalling and delightful all at the same time.”
Shanti van Dam, the director of the awarding institution, said that the decision to award Perry with the prize was not related to Brexit.
The ceremony will take place in the royal palace in Amsterdam, and will be presented by King Willem-Alexander, the current monarch in the Netherlands.
