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Per Kirkeby Winter, 1999 oil on canvas 73 3/4 x 67 in. This metaphor is very important to me, because when I paint, I like to think of myself as a gardener. My canvas is the plot of land and my colors -- that is, the matter of the paint itself -- are the soil and the flowerbeds, with their different components and varying textures. This may be a quaint way of speaking; yet, in practice, this is exactly how I work.1 Per Kirkeby, 1997 Per Kirkeby's multi-faceted activities as artist, poet, novelist, filmmaker and geologist converge in his sublime landscapes, which are cinematic in their drama and sedimentary in their multiple layers of paint. Winter conveys the awesome beauty and solitary silence of the glacial environment with which Kirkeby became acquainted during his geological fieldwork in Greenland in 1958. The artist has since returned numerous times, most recently in 1993. The scale in Winter is deliberately vague, suggesting either a close-up, cross section of a retreating ice field with its cave-like depressions or a bird's eye view of an arctic panorama. Kirkeby's art integrates the nineteenth century Northern Romantic tradition of landscape painting with the freedom of brushstroke defined by the Abstract Expressionist movement of the mid-twentieth century. Kirkeby's art has undergone many changes over the years, reflecting his studies at Copenhagen's Experimental Art School in 1962 where a more conceptual art orientation dominated. Travel to Latin America in 1971 shifted the artist's focus and reconfirmed his initial training based on observations of the natural world. In the 1980s, Kirkeby garnered international recognition as he became identified with a group of European Neo-Expressionist artists, including George Baselitz and Anselm Kiefer. While admiring their art, Kirkeby sets himself apart from his peers by pointing to his approach to color as a distinguishing feature. He spends several months building up a canvas with broad strokes of paint and then meticulously applying hatchings of colored lines to the final surface.2 During this period, Kirkeby began making his first abstract sculptures in bronze and accepted an appointment as Professor of Art at the Stadelschule in Frankfurt, Germany. The late 1980s and 1990s were marked by numerous exhibitions around the world, among them a major retrospective at the Ludwig Museum, Cologne in 1987 and solo exhibitions at MIT's List Visual Art Center (1991); City Art Museum, Helsinki (1993); Maison des Arts Georges Pompidou, Paris (1996); and Tate Gallery, London (1998). The paintings of the 1990s are more consistently harmonious in color, light and composition than his earlier works.3 Winter is a classic example of Kirkeby's unified and ecological vision, where form and theme merge into a work of compelling beauty and emotional intensity. Barbara Matilsky |