Per Kirkeby, who passed away in his hometown of Copenhagen in 2018, is recognized as the internationally most renowned Danish artist of his generation and one of the most important European contemporary artists. Since his first appearance on the scene in the early 1960s, he has created a range of motifs - or, in his own words, "structures" - that constitute the foundation of his painting. With a degree in geology, the wealth of landscapes his homeland has to offer served Kirkeby as a constant source of inspiration. Continuing a Northern European landscape tradition rooted in the work of artists such as Caspar David Friedrich, he devised an intuitive, experimental pictorial language anchored in sublime realms between figuration and abstraction. With its organic flow of color, texture, and form, the present work is less a depiction of a specific place than a sensual homage to the magic and mystery of nature. “There is a hidden reality, and that is the true reality,” the artist comments, ”we only see it fleetingly. A painter can sometimes see it .. and if I paint at all, it is only because I see these fleeting moments.” (Per Kirkeby, quoted from: ex. cat. Per Kirkeby, Galerie Philippe Guimiot, Brussels, 1991, p. 64).




In his characteristic pictorial language, Kirkeby created sensual motifs in large formats and with a rich color palette that evoked associations with American Color Field Painting and Abstract Expressionism, bringing the idea of landscape as a sedimentary structure onto the canvas with great mastery. Kirkeby sees nature in cross-section and not from a spatial angle; the surface takes on its structure between transparency and dense heaviness, from the muted and blurred brushstrokes in the background to the powerful gestures in the foreground. The coloring is dramatic, expressive, and executed in an autumnal palette. It is applied in a lengthy working process, whereby the many layers remain only partially visible in the completed work. The actual motif appears to be concealed, surfacing only as traces, and cannot be deciphered at first glance. Hence, Kirkeby's paintings can be regarded as geological studies of the substance of art, in which art and nature become parallel phenomena.
Kirkeby's impressive paintings are part of significant collections today, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Tate Modern, London; the Centre Pompidou, Paris; the Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen; and the Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich. [KA]