217. Wassily Kandinsky,
Eglise à Murnau, oil on cardboard, 33x44 cm. 1908.
Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944) was born in Moscow where he studied law. After graduation his plans for the future changed and he became an art student in 1897. During 1901-03 he worked as a teacher in the Phalanx-groups Artschool in Munich. At the school he became fond of Gabriele Munther, a young art student who had just returned home from America. Gabriele followed Wassily around in Europe and one day they came across Murnau, a small willage in Bayern just by lake Staaffel that is known for its beauty. Murnau provided inspiration from Bayern folkart. In the summer 1908 the couple spent six weks together with their art collegues Alexei von Jawlensky and Marianne von Werefkini in Murnau. An Expressionist art colony was settled in Murnau at that time. As a natural caus Kandinsky found a sound interest in folkart and painted glassworks. "Eglise à Murnau" or "Murnau - Autumn Landscape and Church" is foreseeing his abstact period. The very next year he dated in Murnau his first version of the important therotical thesis "Über das Geistige in der Kunst". The crucial colour theories are adapted from Goethe and Schopenhauer who stated that the polarity of blue and yellow is of highest priority. Kandinsky said that shapes and colours touch directly the human spirit. "Colour is the clavier, the eye a hammer and the soul a multilingual piano."
241. Karel Appel,
Chanteurs de Rue, 99x81 cm. 1964.
Didrichsen Art Museum has a large collection of works by the COBRA group from artists like: Stephen Gilbert, Lubertus Lucebert, Carl-Henning Pedersen and Anton Rooskeens. The groop is named after Copenhagen, Brussels and Amsterdam. These three citys were occupied by Natsis during the II World War where an abstract realism gained terraine since the year 1948. Art had been ruled by natsi-ideology all too long and now it was time to tear up the strait-jacket. Karel Appel had a need to return to the expressionistic and abstract myths of the Northern countrys. He found great interest in art made by children and insane people. He has declamed that his colour tube is like a rocket.
140. Reidar Särestöniemi,
The Father Image in the Patriarchal Heaven of
the Agrarian Village,, 99x81 cm. 1964.
It has been said that the artist Reidar Särestöniemi (1925-1981) from Lappland was a happy colourspot in the grey Finland's grey art life. The premises for his artistic carreer was already unusual. He was born and lived in Särestö village in Kittilä wich is situated over 100 kilometers to the north from the polar circle. As a child he learned to do all kinds of things by hand and to love nature. The first time ever that he saw a painting was in Helsinki where he studied in the Artacademy 1947-50. He visited France and Italy for four months as part of the art education and there he fell in love with the colours by Matisse and the depictive poetry by Chagall. In this painting the artist identifies himself with the landscape. Särestöniemi was terrified by the long dark winter and the kaamos - he was to conquer the winter by painting.
112. Helene Schjerfbeck,
Self Portrait with Black Mouth, 39,5x28 cm.1939.
There is a large collection of works by Helene Schjerfbeck (1862-1946) in the Didrchsen Art Museum. She has become famous for her self portraits just like Rembrandt,Vincent van Gogh, Albrecht Dürer and Frida Kahlo. She has at least painted 36 self portraits during har life and the most intensive period was 1939-45 when she was already in her eighties. "Self Portrait with Black Mouth" is one of the last interpretations where she is still masked. Soon after that she is unmasking herself and starts to show her skull. The same year that the Winter War broke out 1939 she painted this portrait that is full of distress and panic. Her two sided face is depicted palewhite and the assymetrical eyes reflect a frightened and frozen artist. By minimizing physical plasticity she emphasizes the spirit and the soul. This is though a beautifully coloured painting in warm rose colours that she has stroken on with a palett knife.
219. Fernand Léger,
Nature Morte a la Coupe, 45,5x37 cm. 1948.
From 1905 to the 20 ies Fernand Legér (1881-1955) developed his artistic skills from impressionism, kubism and a mechanical phase when he designed costumes and decorations for Rolf de Marés movie Ballet Suédois. Léger visited the United States in 1931 and worked there in 1940-45 as a teacher at the universities of Yale and California. After the II World War he returned to Paris and enrolled in the communist party. He believed that workers could learn to appreciate a new realism once the colours and forms were set free. Beauty was to be found everywhere: in machines, nature and colour. But the highest goal was usefullness.