Odd Nerdrum

ODD NERDRUM is one of Norway’s foremost artists who finds its models and teachers at the old masters. Internationally, he is considered to be the most significant classic figurative painter and he has formed a new generation of figurative painters. Already at his first collective exhibition in 1964 he was perceived as the most distinctive of his ancient masterpieces, figurative and heavy paintings, among the seven young artists invited to the June Exhibition in the Artists’ Union.

In front of the pictures of Odd Nerdrum, most people will see a picturesque skill that one did not think was possible. The figures and the landscape glow and are so natural that you almost stick your hand into the illusion. But do you really want to put your hand into Nerdrum’s world? It is a world you do not want to live, and you do not recognize it; a timeless, sometimes golden universe of people who fly, sleep, sing, starve, jump or perform others at times morbid actions, often with demolished limbs or strange, crumbled anatomies. The human beings, or figures, are seductive and repulsive at the same time. The clothes and props are without time and geography; with helmet-like headgear or hoods. Several are located in sarcophagus sleeping bags. The women watch over their children lying safely in cocoons in the process of opening up. Some mingle in kisses that can compete with Edvard Munch, Gustave Klimt and Rodin’s kissing couple. A series of paintings is called Absence of Light, where the characters have occupied a light summery world with swabergy, sea and light blue sky.

(source: https://www.fineart.no/kunstner/odd-nerdrum)