(Editor’s note: This article was originally published in October 2023.) The prestige of winning a Nobel Prize is an award in itself, but recipients receive more than just the honor. The award includes a monetary award, a “green gold” medal plated with 24k gold, and original artwork by the Nobel Prize winners in Physics, Chemistry, Literature, Economics and Peace.
Art is arguably the defining feature of the modern laureate’s diploma, but it has been part of the Nobel Prize since its inception. In 1901, the first year the prize was awarded, Norwegian painter Gerhard Munthe created a lithograph for the Peace Prize, which was used until 1969 when it was replaced in 1970 by a woodcut by Norwegian artist and illustrator Ørnulf Ranheimsæter.
The art of early Nobel Prizes was often inseparable from the identity of the diploma. Sofia Gisberg’s designs for chemistry laureates, including Marie Curie in 1911, were more decorative than artistic, although cleverly done. Her 1918 work for laureate Fritz Haber is very distinctive, with a beautiful rendering of an estate and park in the large margins of a diploma.
The art of Elsa Örtengren, for whom she was awarded the 1933 Nobel Prize in Physics (awarded to Erwin Schrödinger and Paul Adrian Maurice Dirac), entered a second phase of calligraphy, completely overlapping with art, but her work was in no danger of fading into the background due to its compelling scientific themes.
Well into the 20th century, it was not uncommon for the same artist (possibly a calligrapher) to create Nobel Prize-winning artwork year after year. Bertha Svensson-Piehl’s artwork appears on 45 Nobel Prize certificates for Literature and Medicine, and as of 1964, artwork was used in award certificates. The artwork she created for the 1958 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (awarded to George Biddle, Edward Tatum, and Joshua Lederberg) and the 1960 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (awarded to Sir Frank MacFarlane Burnett and Peter Medawar) takes up more space on the page than the text, foreshadowing the future of Nobel diploma art with the Nobel diploma.
The art of the Nobel Prize folio would eventually decouple from calligraphy and gradually take up half of the custom leather folios the laureates received, but the transition from illustration or decoration to artwork took many years.
Pablo Neruda’s 1971 Nobel Prize in Literature folio features Gunnar Brusewitz’s vivid full-page work with calligrapher Kerstin Anckers’ handwriting, while 1972 Christinford Antanford Antantford Antantford, Mtanford Anford Winner Nobel Finson. Moore and William H. Stein received folios decorated with Brusewitz’s work.
By around the 1980s, however, the artwork often took up the entire left page of the Nobel Prize portfolio, although it was not necessarily unique to the laureate’s contribution beyond the Literature Diploma. Historically, Arts in Physics and Chemistry Diplomas have featured annual themes. Ranhemset’s woodcuts adorned the Peace Prize collection until 1990 – and it was not until 1991 that the Norwegian Nobel Committee began commissioning original works of art from contemporary Norwegian artists, including Jakob Weidemann, Ørnulf Opdahl, Jken Johanna.
Today, Nobel Prize-winning artists typically produce works (mostly paintings, but sometimes photographs) that correspond in some way to each laureate’s contribution to science, literature, or the welfare of the world.
In Brusewitz’s book with Birger Christofferson, note takerwho commented on the 1978 Nobel Prize diploma artwork for the Polish-born Jewish-American writer Isaac Bashevis Singer:
“The diploma is dominated by the Star of David, its six prompts pointing to characters and events from Singer’s book. The picture in the upper left part is inspired by The Magician of Lublin. A parrot appears there, but also symbolizes the bird that flies away with the sins of the people. Under it, there are several rabbis holding Torah scrolls and ceremonial ram horns. Next to it is Yaya Yakob from The Slave, imprisoned as a slave.
The thought behind each piece is noteworthy, especially considering that Nobel Prize-winning artists have to work at breakneck speed. After receiving the commission, the artists will learn who the winners of that year are at the same time as the public. From that point on, they have just a few weeks, from early October to mid-November, to determine how best to represent the often extremely complex or subtle achievement of a work of art that will undoubtedly be treasured by the laureate throughout his life. “I think [the art] Dr. Robert Lefkowitz, winner of the 2012 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, told NPR, “It’s a very neat thing and very meaningful. Like other Nobel prizes, that seems to be what sets it apart from the others.”
Artists responsible for creating works for the 2023 Nobel Prize winners include Pierre Agostini, Ferenc Krausz and Anne L’Huillier in physics; Moungi Bawendi, Louis E. Brus and Alexey Ekimov in chemistry; and Jon Foss in literature. This year’s Nobel Prize-winning artists will soon be hard at work, and each artist’s contribution to the rich history of the Nobel Prize will be revealed in December at the Nobel Prize Ceremony, which honors the contributions of the world’s great thinkers.