LAST CHANCE TO SEE THE EXHIBITION – SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 28
Come and experience a unique retrospective exhibition of works by Carl-Henning Pedersen that have never been exhibited before!
When Skive Art Museum opens its doors on January 17, 2025, it will be with an exuberant exhibition of works from internationally renowned artist Carl-Henning Pedersen. The retrospective exhibition shows early experimental works from the 1930s and follows the development to the more calm compositions of the 1990s. The exhibition is a journey from the artist’s first painterly attempts on canvas to a mature and practiced line.
We all know his poetic, curly and melting lines that are filled with joy and energy. Carl-Henning Pedersen’s fundamental project is the same throughout his life: to open up to the innermost core of himself as an artist and share his inner self with the world through art. Spontaneity is the key to Carl-Henning Pedersen’s inner self. He paints out of desire, and the immediate impulses lead the brush and color choices. The paintings become a direct invitation to the artist’s mind, so to speak.
Carl-Henning Pedersen painted his expressive paintings out of desire and reportedly never when he was in a bad mood. Therefore, the paintings exude joie de vivre. However, the joy of color faded during World War II, and the dark, restless and melancholic paintings are also represented in the exhibition. From 1948 to 1953, he and his first wife, artist Else Alfelt, became part of the abstract expressive CoBrA movement, along with Asger Jorn, Egill Jacobsen, Henry Heerup and others. The group made an indelible mark on art, finding inspiration in the spontaneity of children’s drawings and masks from Africa as a counter-reaction to the academic tradition of the West.
After the war and the collective educational journey, he returned to the happy, bright colors that exude joie de vivre and became his trademark.
Colors are essential to Carl-Henning Pedersen’s work. He desires color and revels in violent contrasts that are applied to the canvas with pastose brushstrokes. The coloring is clear and pure, and the colors fight contrast-filled wrestling matches. There aren’t many artists who can make the darkest blue seem as dazzling, poetic and luminous as Carl-Henning Pedersen.
At the beginning of Carl-Henning Pedersen’s career, the figures on the canvas are delineated with clear black contour lines, and along the way the lines dissolve into white edges. The white makes the figures float on the picture surface, as if they are moving beyond the frames of the paintings. It is always in an upward, energetic flight that leaves the earthly. The creatures are often flying birds, horses, mythical creatures, dream visions and masks etc. Which he animates with eyes. Although the bird and horse are a favorite motif for Carl-Henning Pedersen, all fantasy creatures are different individuals. The exhibition offers experiences in Carl-Henning Pedersen’s fantasy world filled with towers, castles, stars and suns. – A fairytale cosmos that, like the fairy tales, takes the viewer on a spiritual journey that deals with life’s most essential emotions.
The Carl Henning-Pedersen paintings are on loan from the Carl-Henning Pedersen Foundation.
