Per Kirkeby and the "forbidden paintings" of Kurt Schwitters: retrospective

Abstract

The Centre for Fine Arts presents a retrospective of the work of Per Kirkeby (born in 1938), one of the key painters of the Danish avant-garde. But just what does avant-garde mean: rupture, minimalism, abstraction, borrowings, subversion? One can find all of those in a prolific body of work that began in the 1960s in the wake of the Fluxus movement. But that is only one aspect of a very diverse oeuvre that draws just as much on the figuration of Danish classicism and the experiments of 19th-century French masters such as Eugène Delacroix. Kirkeby cannot be pigeonholed, nor does he want to be: he prefers to relentlessly question the position and the perceptions of the observer. An artistic process that has seen him turn to different media (canvas, blackboards, paper, bronze, etc.) in an assertion of the freedom he finds, as a trained geologist, in the omnipresence of nature. It is in this context that the Kurt Schwitters room in the exhibition is so relevant.

Contents

Artist's note / Per Kirkeby -- Introduction / Siegfried Gohr -- Per Kirkeby: the 1960s / Erik Steffenson -- Early works -- Per Kirkeby: French detour / Éric Darragon -- Paintings ; Blackboards ; Overpaintings ; Works on paper -- The sculpture of Per Kirkeby / Kosme de Barañano -- Sketches for brick sculptures -- Pulsating like an accordion: Per Kirkeby's brick sculptures / Ulrich Wilmes -- Per Kirkeby Litt. / Asger Schnack -- Kirkeby and Schwitters / Siegfried Gohr -- The "forbidden paintings" of Kurt Schwitters.