Women of Surrealism Franciska Clausen, Rita Kernn-Larsen and Elsa Thoresen 15 September 2018–20 January 2019

PRESS RELEASE WOMEN OF SURREALISM FRANCISKA CLAUSEN, RITA KERNN-LARSEN AND ELSA THORESEN 15 SEPTEMBER 2018–20 JANUARY 2019

Rita Kernn-Larsen: Festen,1935, the Art Museum in Tønder

THIS FALL’S MAJOR EXHIBITION AT KUNSTFORENINGEN GL STRAND SHINES A SPOTLIGHT ON THREE FEMALE ARTISTS, WHO IN THEIR HEYDAY MADE A NAME FOR THEMSELVES AMONG THE FRONTRUNNERS OF DANISH SURREALISM, BUT WERE LATER FORGOTTEN. THE EXHIBITION PRESENTS AN ABUNDANCE OF WONDERFUL, FIGURATIVE AND IMAGINATIVE WORKS OF WHICH SEVERAL HAVE NEVER BEEN SHOWN TO THE PUBLIC BEFORE. WOMEN OF SURREALISM FRANCISKA CLAUSEN, RITA KERNN-LARSEN AND ELSA THORESEN 15 SEPTEMBER 2018–20 JANUARY 2019

The exhibition Women of Surrealism. Franciska Clausen, Rita Kernn-Larsen and Elsa Thoresen makes Danish art history by showing the three female artists side by side for the first time ever in an extensive presentation of their Surrealist works from the successful years in the 1920s-1940s. The works consist of more than 100 paintings and paper works and show an abundance of surreal landscapes, complex figure compositions and poetic worlds.

Franciska Clausen, Rita Kernn-Larsen and Elsa Thoresen all fell into oblivion after their heyday. However, the work of both Clausen and Kernn-Larsen has been shown in retrospective solo exhibitions in modern times, while this is the first time the less well-known work of Elsa Thoresen is shown.

Learning from the Best The exhibition’s presentation, communication and choice of works unite the three women artistically, while at the same time exploring their individual approaches to the ideas of Surrealism. By combining these three artists the exhibition also has an eye for the life stories of the three remarkable painters, whose paths crossed time and again in a time of artistic upheaval. As young students of art they were all absorbed in the innovations of the avant-garde within contemporary 1920s art. To learn from the best, they turned to the leading exponents for the new schools of art, which among other things brought them to Paris and Brussels.

In Paris the Surrealist movement and its front figure, the poet André Breton, and his 1924 manifest had created a new path for art expressing a break with the prevailing set of values. The Surrealists wanted to break with the common sense-reasoning society and instead make dreams, the imagination and the unconscious their source of inspiration and guideline. Among other things, this led to new methods and motives in art.

The affiliations of Franciska Clausen, Rita Kernn-Larsen and Elsa Thoresen, respectively, to Surrealism differed. They all interpreted its methods and ideas in figurative as well as abstract scenes. The three artists thus took Surrealism as their starting point for exploring inner landscapes, the psyche and various expressions in their art. They met in the 1930s around the Danish group of Surrealists in which Rita Kernn- Larsen and Elsa Thoresen were main actors.

Remarkable Artists and Women The exhibition Women of Surrealism. Franciska Clausen, Rita Kernn-Larsen and Elsa Thoresen breaks with the fact that while many are familiar with the male Danish exponents for Surrealism – Vilhelm Freddie, Richard Mortensen and Vilhelm Bjerke Petersen, among others – today few are familiar with the work and impact of Franciska Clausen, Rita Kernn-Larsen and Elsa Thoresen within Danish Surrealist art.

‘The exhibition is in line with Kunstforeningen GL STRAND’s returning interest in female artists. Each in their own way the three artists are remarkable painters and women. They defy conventional contemporary views of women and thus risk their own social status – to go exploring and to allow themselves to be inspired by the great artists of the time. Today their work, inspired by the principles of Surrealism, holds a unique strength, poeticism and sense of wonder. We look forward to giving the general public a chance to experience them’, says Helle Behrndt, Director of Kunstforeningen GL STRAND.

The exhibition is organised by MSJ – the Art Museum in Tønder, Kunstforeningen GL STRAND and Art Historian, MA Johan Zimsen Kristiansen in cooperation. The latter is the curator of the present presentation of Elsa Thoresen. WOMEN OF SURREALISM FRANCISKA CLAUSEN, RITA KERNN-LARSEN AND ELSA THORESEN 15 SEPTEMBER 2018–20 JANUARY 2019

CATALOGUE: Women of Surrealism. Franciska Clausen, Rita Kernn-Larsen and Elsa Thoresen is accompanied by a richly illustrated catalogue containing several articles that offer new research perspectives on the impact of the three artists on Danish Surrealism and the impact of Surrealism on their art. The Danish-language catalogue will contain reproductions of all exhibited works and is addressed to the general public as well as to art professionals. Co-authors: Art Historian, MA Johan Zimsen Kristiansen, Museum Curator at Museum Sønderjylland – the Art Museum in Tønder Søs Bech Ladefoged, Art Historian and Curator Nathalie Ernoult at Centre Pompidou in Paris, Museum Curator at Museum Sønderjylland – the Art Museum Brundlund Castle Morten la Cour and Art Historian and Exhibition Curator Gražina Subelyte.

The exhibition Women of Surrealism. Franciska Clausen, Rita Kernn-Larsen and Elsa Thoresen is shown at Kunstforeningen GL STRAND from 15 September 2018 to 20 January 2019. Subsequently, the exhibition travels to Museum Sønderjylland – the Art Museum in Tønder, where it is shown from 2 February to 2 June 2019.

The opening of the exhibition at Kunstforeningen GL STRAND will be held on 14 September at 17:00-18:30.

You are invited to a PRESS SHOWING on 14 September 2018 at 11:00 attended by Director of Kunstforeningen GL STRAND Helle Behrndt, Curator at Kunstforeningen GL STRAND Pernille Fonnesbech, Head of Section for Art at Museum Sønderjylland – the Art Museum in Tønder Anne Blond, Museum Curator at Museum Sønderjylland – the Art Museum in Tønder Søs Bech Ladefoged, Museum Curator at Museum Sønderjylland – the Art Museum Brundlund Castle Morten la Cour and Art Historian, MA Johan Zimsen Kristiansen.

The press conference will be followed by a light lunch. If you are able to attend the event, please inform Communications Manager Charlotte Frost at [email protected].

For more INFORMATION, please contact Communications Manager Charlotte Frost at +45 33 36 02 61/[email protected] or Communications Assistant Camilla Agerskov at [email protected].

PRESS PHOTOS and PRESS RELEASES are available in our newsroom at: http://www.glstrand.dk/presse/2018.aspx

Follow us on Facebook (Kunstforeningen GL STRAND) or Instagram (@kunstglstrand) for news about exhibitions and events at Kunstforeningen GL STRAND. WOMEN OF SURREALISM FRANCISKA CLAUSEN, RITA KERNN-LARSEN AND ELSA THORESEN 15 SEPTEMBER 2018–20 JANUARY 2019

Franciska Clausen (1899-1986)

Franciska Clausen’s interest in Surrealism is evident from her works from the second half of the 1920s. During this period, she lives in Paris and is part of the art scene centred around the Modernist painter Fernand Léger.

From 1924-1925 she works in Paris at Fernand Legér’s Académie Moderne, and his art has a dominant influence on her work, which however is less figurative than that of her mentor. In 1924 works by Franciska Clausen as well as by Otto Carlssund and Erik Olson are shown in Paris in an exhibition of Léger and his Scandinavian students. In the late 1920s she is drawn towards the abstract style of Neoplasti- Franciska Clausen: Fisken,1926, the Art Museum Brundlund Castle cism, and in 1930 she exhibits with the group Cercle et Carré, which includes Piet Mondrian, among others. Franciska Clausen also explores other Modernist trends and performs Surrealist experiments, mainly in the form of collages.

When her father dies she returns to Aabenraa where she continues to work for many years, isolated from the Danish art scene, doing portraits on request. In 1964 her paintings and gouaches are shown in a retrospective exhibition at Kunstforeningen GL STRAND.

Rita Kernn-Larsen (1904-1998)

Rita Kernn-Larsen comes to occupy a central position among Danish Surrealists after having lived abroad for a period of years and drawn inspiration from the new Avant-garde principles and tendencies of the time. Her art training begins in 1924 at Statens Tegneskole in Oslo. Later she returns to Copenhagen to continue her training at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in the years 1927-1929.

Kernn-Larsen focusses on the new Modernist painting and considers the training offered in Copenhagen too conventional. She moves to Paris in 1929 and, like Clausen, becomes a student of Fernand Léger at the Académie Moderne in 1930-1931. Under his instruction she gains a detailed sense of shape, volume and principles of composition, and initially she experiments with various new styles, including Cubism and Léger’s machine aesthetics. She is promoted by Léger, who engages her to transfer his drawings onto the big canvas, but she also has an eye for Rita Kernn-Larsen: Blåt Dilemma, 1935, the Art Museum in Tønder pictures that tell a story and successfully manages to sell illustrations to Danish daily newspapers and magazines during these years.

After her death the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice recreates her 1938 exhibition at the Guggenheim Jeune gallery in 2017. WOMEN OF SURREALISM FRANCISKA CLAUSEN, RITA KERNN-LARSEN AND ELSA THORESEN 15 SEPTEMBER 2018–20 JANUARY 2019

Elsa Thoresen (1906-1994)

Elsa Thoresen is officially introduced to the philosophy of Surrealism through her first husband, the Danish artist and Surrealist frontrunner in Copenhagen Vilhelm Bjerke Petersen (1909-1957). They meet at the academy in Oslo, to which Elsa Thoresen has moved after having spent her entire childhood in the USA with her Norwegian parents. She is a student at the Norwegian National Academy of Craft and Art Industry from 1924-1927 and the National Academy of Art in Oslo, where she is enrolled up until 1929.

In the years 1927-1929 she also studies at the Académie Royal des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, Belgium. Here Surrealism also has a good grip on the art scene with the Belgian painter René Magritte as a significant front figure. In 1944 Thoresen and Bjerke Petersen are forced to flee to Sweden. Here they join the Halmstad Group, which has managed to establish an active Surrealist art milieu. After the war Thoresen and Bjerke Petersen move to the USA, when Bjerke Petersen receives a Guggenheim scholarship. In 1947 they return to Sweden, but divorce in 1953, after which Thoresen returns to the USA, where she remains for the rest of her life.

Elsa Thoresen: Objects of the Elements, 1945, the Art Museum in Tønder In 1939 Elsa Thoresen and Vilhelm Bjerke Petersen create 13 Surrealist paintings in the various stairways of the apartment building Ved Volden in Christianshavn in Copenhagen.