1 Ejler Bille Eugène Brands
Ejler Bille Eugène Brands (Danish, 1910–2004) (Dutch, 1913–2002) Large Mask (Store Maske), Mask, 1946 1944 Papier maché Bronze NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale, NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale, The Golda and Meyer Marks Cobra The Golda and Meyer Marks Cobra Collection; M-352 Collection; M-235 After studying commercial drawing at the Amsterdam School for Applied Arts, Eugène Ejler Bille, a writer and a painter, was a Brands became an artist in the 1930s, key member of the Danish avant-garde making assemblages of found objects groups Linien (The Line), Helhesten (The inspired by Surrealism. Just after the end of Hell-Horse), and Høst (Autumn), which the war, Amsterdam art dealer Frits Lemaire continued the avant-garde legacy of Dada, commissioned Brands to create precise Surrealism, and German Expressionism in pencil drawings of his extensive collection Denmark in the 1930s and 1940s. Bille’s of ethnographic masks and objects from Large Mask reflects the Danish avant-garde’s west Africa and Oceania for a book he was investigation of ethnographic objects and publishing. This project inspired Brands to ancient Scandinavian art. Rather than a design and manufacture his own versions of mask to be worn, the heaviness of the masks. Often beginning with a papier-mâché bronze suggests something ancient and base, he would add paint and elements of permanent, much like the prehistoric Nordic assemblage, such as egg shell or snake rock carvings discussed in the journal skin, to form the masks. Lemaire also took a Helhesten (1941–1944). The mask takes on series of photographs of Brands imaginatively an anthropomorphic quality through the posing with these masks, as seen in the extensions suggesting limbs that protrude exhibition slide show.
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