Now you have the opportunity to discover Astrup’s colorful and atmospheric landscape painting from Jølster in Norway, where he grew up, but also to experience his suggestive graphic work. Like his contemporary artist colleague Edvard Munch, Nikolai Astrup developed and renewed the expressive possibilities of the woodcut. Astrup’s work is permeated with the moods and mysticism of the local environment, as well as its distinctive atmosphere and light. Nikolai Astrup also came to build an artist’s home called Astruptunet, where architecture, art, nature and garden interacts as a whole.
The exhibition includes about a hundred works, mainly oil paintings and woodcuts, and is complemented by a richly illustrated catalogue with articles by a number of prominent experts from Norway, the USA and Sweden as well as an introductory essay by the author Karl Ove Knausgård. The exhibition is also complemented by interesting lectures, guided tours and concerts as well as by a small presentation in the Bernadotte Room of paintings by Prince Eugens with Norwegian motifs and by works by Norwegian artists from the museum’s own collections.
”Nikolai Astrup: Visions of Norway is organized by the Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts, in cooperation with KODE Art Museums and Composer Homes, Bergen, the Savings Bank Foundation DNB, and Prince Eugen’s Waldemarsudde. The exhibition has been generously supported by the Savings Bank Foundation DNB.”
The curator of the exhibition is MaryAnne Stevens, independent curator and art historian.
