#kunsten aalborg

[i12bent]

Axel Helsted (April 11, 1847 - 1907) was a Danish painter whose father, Frederik Ferdinand Helsted ran a drawing school for the Royal Academy. Axel was also sent to the Academy as a young lad and finished his training there at age 19.

After touring several European capitals - Paris, London, Berlin, Rome - he returned home to get married, and soon after he was off again and spent five years in Italy with his wife. Unfortunately she passed away at 34 in 1886, and after that Helsted turned to religious art, especially after a journey to Palestine in 1890.

Prior to that he mainly produced portraits and light genre paintings, such as this one:

A young Italian woman playing with a dog, 1872 - oil on canvas (formerly at Kunsten, Aalborg, but now privately owned)

[i12bent]

Karl Larsen (April 18, 1897 - 1977) was a Danish Modernist painter. In 1920 he founded a group called De Fire (The Four), with Svend Johansen, Vilhelm Lundstrøm and Axel Salto. They spent several years in Southern France, absorbing Fauvism and Colorist aesthetics.

After his return to Denmark and a short stint at the Academy to learn mosaic techniques, Larsen mainly painted landscapes from different parts of Denmark, including Bornholm and Thy.

Above: Redningshuse i Thy, 1927 - oil on canvas (Kunsten, Aalborg)

[i12bent]

Preben Hornung (July 22, 1919 - 1989) was a Danish artist who worked mainly in the Constructivist vein. He trained at Kunsthåndværkerskolen and after that the Royal Academy throughout the 1940s. He partcipated in Linien II, with the black and white series of 'factory images', one of which is seen here...

Above: Fabriksbillede, 1949 - Oil on canvas (Kunsten, Aalborg)

[i12bent]

William Stuhr (Feb. 10, 1882 - 1958) was a last generation Skagen painter who had trained at Tuxen’s art school in Copenhagen. He started spending summers in Skagen and winters in Christianshavn in Copenhagen, doing landscapes and city scenes. He also dabbled in the occasional portrait and was famously called on to do a deathbed portrait of Michael Ancher in 1927.

Stuhr’s work can be found at Kunsten in Aalborg and Skagen Kunstmuseer. Here is an undated oil painting of Skagen from the sea side, sold at auction recently.

[i12bent]

Alvar Aalto (Feb. 3, 1898 - 1976) was a Finnish, Modernist architect, whose love of white marble and copper designs really shines in the Museum of Modern Art in Aalborg, Denmark, now known as Kunsten.

Aalto designed the museum building and its fixtures in the mid 1960s and the museum was built from 1968 to 1972. He was assisted by his wife Elissa Aalto and Danish architect Jean-Jacques Baruël.

This museum building is the only work of Aalto’s constructed outside his native Finland. It entered the register of protected buildings in Denmark already in 1995, as the first building of less than 100 years of age ever.

[i12bent]

Else Alfelt (Sept. 16, 1910 - 1974) was an important Danish artist, associated with various movements through her life. She started out as a naturalist painter, but soon went abstract under the influence of Surrealism and the Danish group Linien (The Line) which brought French Surrealism to Denmark in the mid 1930s. During WW II she was part of Asger Jorn’s Helhesten (The Hell-Horse) group, leading into her association with and membership of CoBrA.

Else Alfelt was married to Carl-Henning Pedersen, and the two of them share a museum just outside the Danish town of Herning...

Her mature art became prismatic, meditative contemplations of nature. Here is a good example from Kunsten in Aalborg:

Jorden - Vandet og Bjergene, 1952 (oil on furniture plate)

[clausbuschrisvig]

Michael Kvium