Croatian artist Alfred Krupa wins 1st World Award in Painting and Artist of the Year title at the 13th International InterArtia Art Festival

Alfred Krupa (Photo credit: Dinko Neskusil)

VOLOS, Greece, January 2021 – On the recently finished 13th consequent edition of the Interartia Art Festival, Croatian contemporary painter Alfred Freddy Krupa received outstanding distinctions and the Evaluation Committee unanimously awarded the artist the 1st World Award in Painting and the title of the Artist of the Year 2020.

The International Festival Interartia 2020, which among others includes the International Music Competitions 2020 as well as Artists of the Year 2020 Competition has been organized by the Foudoulis’ Conservatory and International Art Society & Academy in Volos, Greece.

In order to be considered for the title of the Artist of the Year, an artist must previously gain the 1st First international Prize (the World Award) in his/her field.

Since its inception, the festival awarded and collaborated with a number of famous and notable artists like Martha Argerich (the winner of the Japanese Premium Imperiale and 3 Grammy awards), Éric Pénicaud, Nobuyuki Tsujii, The Quartetto di Cremona, Peter Bence (Guinness World Record-breaking pianist with “the fastest fingers on the planet”), Małgorzata Chodakowska, Fraguial Francisco Guilherme de Almeida Jesus, Alondra de la Parra, Marco Minnemann, Tolgahan Çoğulu, Sungha Jung, Silesian Guitar Octet, Robert Hagan (the host of the Discovery HD/Discovery television show “Splash of Color”) and many others.

Alfred Krupa, grandson, and pupil of his grandfather painter and inventor Alfred Krupa Sr. ( Alfred Joseph Kruppa 1915-1989) first appeared in the eye of the general public in 1990 in the very popular Yugoslavian magazine “Vikend” (Weekend). In 1992 he was granted the Karlovac City stipend for talented students. In 1995 Krupa graduated (MFA in Painting, official title: Academic painter) from the University of Zagreb Academy of Fine Arts (ALU). In 1996 he wrote a text which turns to be the programmatic text of the New Ink Art movement. The original manuscript of the New Ink Art Manifesto today is the property of the documenta archive – the records and papers collection in Kassel. 

In 1998 he departed to Tokyo Gakugei University as the very first Croatian painter – recipient of the Japanese Government Scholarship to research Japanese ink painting. 

Since 1990 Krupa has been awarded, exhibited, collected, and promoted around the globe.

Among other notable awards, this freethinker and secular painter in 2013 has been awarded by the very last sovereign ruler of Rwanda HM Kigeli V (1936 – 2016) with the title and rank of the Grand Cross of the Royal Order of the Crown of Rwanda, sharing the same distinction, among other, with the Nobel prize winner and the former president of South Africa Nelson Mandela (1918-2013) and the first Prime Minister of the independent Democratic Republic of the Congo (then Republic of the Congo) Patrice Lumumba (1925-1961).

According to the Badan Rynkowych Institute (Warsaw, Poland) survey report from 2007 (Opinie internautów o Muzeum Sztuki Nowoczesnej w Warszawie, nagrodzonym projekcie budynku i wirtualnym Forum sztuki), Krupa appears among 70 most wanted currently working / creating artists in the future collections of the Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw (MSN).

As of October 2020 with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Historical Popularity Index (HPI) of 47.05, Alfred Freddy Krupa is the 80th most famous living painter, the 5th most famous Croatian Painter, and the most famous living Croatian Painter.

In November 2020 the ArtFacts.net of Berlin (at the present, a database of 876 630 exhibitions and 707 784 artists) ranked A.F. Krupa among Top artists in 6 media (Art Theory, Ink Painting, Fine Art Photography, Watercolor, Writer, Figurative Art) and verified his position among Top 10 Modern Ink Painters.

Alfred Freddy Krupa has been extensively researched by the Allgemeines Kunstlerlexikon (AKL) – World Biographical Dictionary of Artists. 

AKL in its article (updated in 2020) writes about the artist: “In his manifesto (New Ink Art Manifesto, 1996, publ. 2019) Krupa describes his ink painting as an interpretation of western modern art with the means of East Asian ink technique, as a combination of contemporary painting and traditional Chinese-Japanese calligraphy. In this regard, he is considered the leading representative of Modern European ink painting“.