Expressive Nordic Painting

A selection of about hundred years of work in expressive painting will be at display at Galleri Faurschou for this exhibition. With works by Edvard Munch, Asger Jorn, Per Kirkeby and Bjarne Melgaard the exhibition span four generations of Nordic painting and presents artists whom in differing ways work with 'expression' as their artistic starting point.

With focus on 'the expressive' rather than the genre-and time-specific concept of 'Expressionism' this exhibition seeks to exemplify how art since the beginning of Modernism, and with Edvard Munch as a central actor, have renounced naturalistic representations of an 'outer world' in favour of conveying an 'inner' perceived or experienced world. With Munch it is "expression", rather than "imitation" that saturates his work; his paintings are both landscape and psychological interior at the same time.

Artistic expression as communication of emotion goes back to Romanticism and becomes with Modernism, one of art's central functions. Despite the presence of countless other movements in art through modernity to today, expressive modes in art have persisted.

With Jorn, the expressive lies in the spontaneous gesture and the immediate transfer of the body's movement onto the canvas. With Kirkeby it is in what he himself has described as an archaeological fervour where perceived landscapes are transformed or 'filtered' into monumental earth-coloured canvases with golden, violet and green shades filled with signs and symbolic gestures. With Melgaard, the expressive is in the consistent exploration of the self and it's relations with the surrounding world, characterised by the expressive, light lines of his brushstroke.

This exhibition offers fantastic paintings by four influential Nordic artists and gives visitors an opportunity for revisiting artists previously presented by the gallery. Pressetext

Expressive Nordic Painting: Edvard Munch, Asger Jorn, Per Kirkeby, Bjarne Meelgaard