Delightful landscapes, idyllic genre scenes, light-flooded interiors, and atmospheric portraits: this richly illustrated book introduces the most important stylistic directions, artists, and works of Nordic painting. Concentrating on the period of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, it centers on Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Iceland, but also considers the equally interesting Nordic regions of the Faroes, Greenland, and the German-Danish borderland.
The authors Katharina Alsen and Annika Landmann investigate important pictorial subjects such as landscapes, interiors, urban motifs, and abstraction on the basis of significant works by artists like Edvard Munch, Vilhelm Hammershøi, Helene Schjerfbeck, Jóhannes S. Kjarval, and Sigrid Hjertén.
Drawing from the most recent research, this extensive monograph addresses itself to various issues, including the interaction between Nordic and Central European artists and the development of modernism in Nordic art. At the same time, it opens up new perspectives on the present: a consideration of the works of contemporary artists such as Ragnar Kjartansson and Olafur Eliasson, which make both thematic and formal reference to the previous century, elucidates the enduring significance of Nordic art even today.
»a volume of such importance to the history of the world’s art is well worth reading«
Biography
Katharina Alsen studied art history at the University of Oxford and German and Scandinavian studies, theology, and philosophy at the University of Hamburg. Studies abroad led her to Copenhagen, Reykjavík, and Tórshavn on the Faroe Islands. Alsen was a scholar at the research training group “InterArt” at the Freie Universität Berlin and at the University of Copenhagen with a doctoral project on staged intimacy. In addition to modernist painting of the Nordic countries, her research interests include contemporary performance art and curatorial theories. She is a regular speaker on art history and theater studies.
Annika Landmann studied art history and Italian language and literature at the University of Hamburg, where she wrote her PhD thesis on the self-portraits of Helene Schjerfbeck. She specializes in the painting of the Nordic countries between the 1880s and the 1940s. During her research, the German-Finnish scholar was a fellow at the University of Turku, Finland, and she currently works for various museums and cultural institutions, among other fields in the area of art education.
