Nikolai Astrup - Belonging and identity

Belonging and identity

Thursday, March 10 at 11.00 in the Lyche pavilion at Drammens Museum

 In 2005, it is 100 years since Nikolai Astrup had his famous
debut exhibition at Blomqvist in Kristiania. Drammens Museum has joined forces with Haugar Vestfold Art Museum and Bergen Art Museum to mark this event in Norwegian art history with a large exhibition consisting of approx. 90 of his most famous works. From Friday 11 March, the exhibition is open to the public.

The exhibition is part of the official program of the Centenary
Norway 2005 and constitutes the prelude to this year's anniversary celebration of the dissolution of the union with Sweden in 1905.

The exhibition is also supported by the Norwegian Cultural Council. After being shown at Haugar and in Drammen, the exhibition will travel on to 8 other Norwegian art museums over a period of almost two years.

Ever since his debut, Nikolai Astrup has been one of our most renowned and
popular artists. His paintings and graphics show in a direct and juicy
idiom a powerful western nature full of everyday idyll and natural mysticism.
His hometown art still stands as a picture of many's sense of belonging to something typical and distinctive Norwegian. What is striking is that both his content and form were largely inspired by the international art currents he had studied during his stays on the continent and in England. This is seen both in the clear inspiration from the meandering line of Art Nouveau and in the elegance of the decorative simplification in the Japanese color woodcuts that were so popular in Europe at the end of the 19th century. Astrup's art also shows clear similarities with
the atmospheric landscape of neo-romanticism, while his regionalism is part of a broad international movement, in which artists sought a simple and traditional life in the countryside to counteract the alienation and stress of the fast-growing cities of industrial society. The exhibition is divided according to the concepts, Place, National and International.

The large book that is published at the same time as this exhibition sets
Nikolai Astrup into a new and current perspective. The eight authors, who cover a wide range of Norwegian art and cultural history, ask, among other things, how Norwegian his art really was and whether the national performances we carry with us have the same meaning and value in today's multicultural society?

Drammens Museum's chief curator Einar Sørensen and director Åsmund Thorkildsen are both co-authors of the book.

The exhibition is curated by Haugar's first curator Einar Wexelsen in
collaboration with Astrup expert Øystein Loge. Together with Professor Gunnar Danbolt, they have also edited the book.     

The exhibition as it is shown in Drammen is mounted by Åsmund Thorkildsen

When the exhibition was shown in Tønsberg, more than 12,000 visitors came. This
The exhibition will be a topic of conversation wherever it is shown, so in the time leading up to 1 May, the people of Drammen and people from the surrounding areas and in the Oslo region have the chance to see it with us!

Welcome!  

With best regards

Åsmund Thorkildsen

Museum director