Høvikodden (AP) After huge success in London’s Nikolai Astrup exhibition come “home.” The exhibition at Henie Onstad Art Centre is the summer’s “must-see exhibition.”
Exhibition: “Nikolai Astrup – Norwegian landscape”
Henie Onstad Arts, Bærum, 10/6 – 11/9.
“Nikolai Astrup – Norwegian landscape” is something as rare as a historic profound and super topical contemporary art exhibition at the same time. When Astrup exhibition now are taken to Henie Onstad Art Centre in Bærum, it has become a much better show than it was possible to get to the intimate Dulwich Picture Gallery on the outskirts of London. Høvikodden get pictures better place, we have more new funding, and the presentation is varied and good.
Almost 50 000 visitors – almost twice as many as expected – as the exhibition in London. British critics stood in line with their superlatives. They compared Nikolai Astrup (1880-1928) with Edvard Munch.
Biggest exhibition to date
In Norway Nikolai Astrup well known, and we have been able to see his art on several occasions. We can not, at least thank art historian Øystein Loge for. He stood behind a large exhibition at Henie Onstad in 1994. At the art museum code of Bergen, they have a permanent Astrup exhibition.
Sparebankstiftelsen DNB owns a large collection, and they are heavily involved in the financing of the international launch . We will be happy, the main curator MaryAnne Stevens’ research on Astrup has led to new knowledge. Stevens, a former director and curator at the Royal Academy in London, upsets the traditional notion of Nikolai Astrup as an indigenous, national artist without much interest outside Norway.
Stevens shows that Astrup was well informed about what happened in European art. She points out how he was affected by what he saw on his many trips abroad. After studying ice to Berlin in 1911, he changed his way of painting: perspective became more complex compositions got clearer structure and colors were stronger and more brilliant.
Innovative graphic
There are paintings that are most familiar. But the exhibition’s main merit is that it shows how intense and varied Nikolai Astrup working with graphics. The close interaction between graphics and painting is also worth noting, and it was often the graphics which came first. He considered each graphic leaf as a unique specimen. It’s great to see how he worked to develop the subject in the same printing plate. As a graphic artist Astrup was at the height of Edvard Munch (1863-1944).
Aside from college and part study trips stayed Nikolai Astrup whole life at Jølstravatnet. Here he brought his motives, and here he ran (despite the fact that he was seriously ill with tuberculosis and asthma) agriculture to feed the family of ten. The conditions were miserable: Astruptunet, there the family moved in 1913, is located in a north-facing, very steep slope.
Rabarbravin
Nikolai Astrup loved rhubarb, and he was widely known for its rabarbravin. Ruhbarb, -flowers and -innhøstingen were central themes in art, just like other (endangered) plants in the distinctive, wild landscape around Jølstravatnet. It is this special landscape and Nikolai Astrup’s particular way of painting it is perceived as fascinating to us today.
It could have stopped there, but Henie Onstad has decided to extend the exhibition of selected contemporary artists. They are based on Astrup enthusiasm for biodiversity. In a large video program of the artist couple Book & amp; Hedén we get a different version of slow-TV. The other contemporary artists have transformed the arts inside and outside to a lush garden and assosiasjonsrik art. This creates a link to the current interest in ecology and the environment, and the circle will be stopped from Jølster and past Bærum and present.
LARS ELTON
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