- Carl-Henning Pedersen
Carl-Henning Pedersen (
23 September 1913 –20 February 2007 ) was a Danish painter and a key member of the COBRA movement. He was known as the "Scandinavia n Chagall", and was one of the leading Danish artists of the second half of the 20th century.Pedersen was born in
Copenhagen and brought up in the poor area near Vigerslev Alle. He held radical political beliefs. He joined theInternational Folk High School inElsinore in 1933, where he met self-taught painterElse Alfelt . They married in 1934, and their first daughter, Vibeke Alfelt, was born later that year. Alfelt encouraged Pedersen to paint, and he first exhibited at the Artists' Autumn Exhibition ("Kunstnernes Efterårsudstilling") in Copenhagen in 1936, where he showed four abstract works. His modernist style was at odds with thesocialist realism preferred by his communist friends, who snubbed him: he argued withBertolt Brecht about his art. His abstract works, with flat planes of colour, emulated the works ofcubist s and ofPaul Klee .Pedersen travelled on foot to
Paris in 1939, where he saw works byPicasso andMatisse . He visited the exhibition of "degenerate art " ("entartete Kunst") inFrankfurt am Main on his way home, where he was inspired by the paintings on show, particularly the works ofChagall , which remained a strong influence on his art for the rest of his life. His second daughter, Kari-Nina, was born in 1940. He joined theHøst group during theNazi occupation of Denmark, writing about medieval Danish murals for its journal, "Helhesten ", and continued to produce seditiously modern abstract works.He and his wife were founder members of the CoBrA movement in 1948. The movement took its name from the European cities where its founders were based:
Copenhagen ,Brussels andAmsterdam . They remaining with the group until it dissolved in 1951, producing free-form, spontaneous images in strong, fantastic colours. He won theEckersberg Award in 1950 and theGuggenheim Award in 1958. A retrospective was put on at theCarnegie Institute inPittsburgh in 1961, and he was Denmark's representative at theVenice Biennale in 1962. He won theThorvaldsen Medal ion 1963.Pedersen moved into monumental art in the 1960s and 1970s, producing a large
mosaic , "Cosmic Sea", for theH. C. Ørsted Institute atCopenhagen University , and a huge tiled wall decoration, "Fantasy Play Around the Wheel of Life", for the Angli courtyard inHerning .Else Alfelt died in 1974. Notorious for resisting selling his works, he donated thousands to the
Carl-Henning Pedersen and Else Alfelt Museum , which opened in Herning in 1976. Further works were donated to theDanish National Gallery ("Statens Museum for Kunst") in early 2007.He moved to
Burgundy in the 1980s, but most of his work still came from Danish sources. He surprised many when he worked on the redecoration of the Gothic cathedral inRibe , working on the murals, painted glass and mosaics to illustrateBible stories from 1983 to 1987. He also produced bronze sculptures, and works in oils and watercolour.He died in
Copenhagen , after a long illness. He was survived by his second wife,Sidsel Ramson .References
* [http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/02/21/arts/EU-A-E-ART-Denmark-Obit-Pedersen.php Obituary] , "
International Herald Tribune ",February 21 ,2007
* [http://news.independent.co.uk/people/obituaries/article2305545.ece Obituary] , "The Independent ",26 February 2007
* [http://www.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,,2032392,00.html Obituary] , "The Guardian ",13 March 2007
* [http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article1576919.ece Obituary] , "The Times ",28 March 2007
* [http://www.chpeamuseum.dk/page.asp?sideid=96&zcs=10 Biography] from theCarl-Henning Pedersen and Else Alfelt Museum External links
* [http://www.chpeamuseum.dk/default.asp?contentsection=10&zcs=2 Carl-Henning Pedersen and Else Alfelt Museum]
* [http://www.galeriebirch.com/artists/carl-henning-pedersen.html Biography, pictures at Danish Galerie Birch famous for COBRA]
* [http://www.cobraart.dk/chp.html Artist history]
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