The painted landscape is a reflection of the soul. The artist makes its surroundings malleable and exteriorizes his deepest feelings on his canvas.
As Edvard Munch said, “A work of art can only come from the interior of man. Art is the form of the image formed upon the nerves, heart, brain and eye of man.” This haunting and obsessive rendition of the world by the Norwegian master marked deeply Per Adolfsen in his boyhood, who discovered his works in Oslo’s Nasjonalgalleriet.
By understanding the postimpressionists and German expressionists, Adolfsen adopted sinuous lines and anti-naturalists colors to transcribe through sceneries his own temperament, as a corner of the creation seen through his expression. Munch then can be seen in his last works, but also Van Gogh’s charcoal drawings of broken trees or the fugitive stroke from impressionists’ paintings ; we would also have to evoke the French Barbizon School and its erasing of the human figure. Through Adolfsen’s original points of view and saturated colors, it is even the Nabi landscapes by artists such as Valloton or Serusier that are referred to, whereas the abundant vegetation reminds us of the Douanier Rousseau.
Per Adolfsen uses pencils as if they were brushes : the skies of “Yellow Field” are striped with fine colorful lines where you feel the telluric and mineral texture of pigments. The serpentine shapes adopted in “The Pine Tree and the Hills” to describe the danish countryside are wavy and undulating. The inertia and the weight of boulders and trees in “Evening Langø” shift to an air-like lightness. The rocks in “Stepping Stones” seem to become air bubbles or colored fumes.
In a way remembering us of Japanese etchings, the artists shows us the “images of the floating world”.
In 2011, Per Adolfsen wasn’t hesitant to describe his production as abstract. Though his production has radically changed, Adolfen’s works still have this same essence : patterns build up the artwork like a tapestry, aggregate through colors that he “doesn’t understand as decorations, but as assemblies”. These colors unify into a comprehensible whole and invite the spectator to enter this calm and peaceful universe. To him “the sky, the water, the trees, it is as if all elements are built on the same structure and are all involved in one another. Somehow, I saw my own life in all these movements of nature.”
In 1435, Alberti defined art as « an open window from which you look at history ». The history that Adolfsen delivers is one of a feathery and forgotten nature where humanity slips away to let the woods become silent. His drawings are not to be interpreted as a pure representation but as an opening. “I would want people to realize they are part of this bigger system” he claimed in 2020.
Per Adolfsen wants us to understand the ascendancy of nature on us. “The mineral kingdom has in it nothing amiable and attractive; its riches, enclosed in the bosom of the earth, seem to be hidden from the sight of matt that they may not tempt his avarice, being there as in reserve, to supply one day the place of those true riches that are more within his reach, for which he loses the inclination in proportion as he becomes corrupt.” as Rousseau wrote in the Meditations of the Solitary Walker.
Exhibition view, Petits poèmes, artworks from Per Adolfsen.Exhibition view, Petits poèmes, artworks from Per Adolfsen.Exhibition view, Petits poèmes, artworks from Per Adolfsen.Exhibition view, Petits poèmes, artworks from Per Adolfsen.Exhibition view, Petits poèmes, artworks from Per Adolfsen.Exhibition view, Petits poèmes, artworks from Per Adolfsen.Per Adolfsen, Hillside, 2022, colored pencil and graphite on Hahnemuehle paper, 42 x 30 cm.Per Adolfsen, Evening Langø, 2022, colored pencil, chalk, graphite on paper, 60 x 42 cm.Per Adolfsen, The Lake, 2021, colored pencil, graphite, ghalk on paper, 60 x 42 cm.Per Adolfsen, Yellow Field, 2020, colored pencil, graphite on paper, 42 x 30 cmPer Adolfsen, The Vision of the Pine And The Two Stones in the Hills, 2021, graphite, colored pencil, chalk on paper, 60 x 42 cm.Per Adolfsen, Flower, 2020, colored pencil on paper, 42 x 30 cm.Per Adolfsen, Fishermans net, colored pencil on paper, 42 x 30 cm.Per Adolfsen, Botanical Garden, 2021, graphite, colored pencil on paper, 60 x 42cm.Per Adolfsen, Petit Poeme, 2021, colored pencil and graphite on paper, 60 x 42 cm.Per Adolfsen, The Fjord and The Lighthouse, 2021, graphite, colored pencil, chalk on paper, 60 x 42 cm.Per Adolfsen, Thinking of Summer in the Park, 2022, colored pencil and graphite on paper, 60 x 42 cm.Per Adolfsen, Trees, Bunker And Beach Late November, 2021, colored pencil, chalk, graphite on paper, 60 x 42 cm.Per Adolfsen, Winter by the Stream, 2022, colored pencil and graphite on paper, 60 x 42 cm.Per Adolfsen, Wish You Where Here, 2022, Colored Pencil and graphite on paper, 60 x 42 cm.Per Adolfsen, Crossroad, 2022, colored pencil, chalk graphite on Hahnemuehle paper, 42 x 30 cm.Per Adolfsen, In the forest, colored pencil on paper, 2022, 42 x 30 cm.Per Adolfsen, Island dressed in white, 2022, Colored pencil, chalk and graphite on paper, 42 x 30 cm.Per Adolfsen, Late At Afternoon Near The Sea, 2020, colored pencil, graphite on paper, 42 x 30 cm.Per Adolfsen, Naked Tress on a Hillside, 2022, Colored pencil and graphite on Hahnemuehle paper, 42 x 30 cm.Per Adolfsen, Night Vision “Stairs Down to the Coast, and behind the trees there is a White Beach and a Silvery Ocean”, 2021, colored pencil, graphite, chalk, 42 x 30 cm.Per Adolfsen, Portrait of a Tree and an Empty Bench in a Park, 2022, colored pencil and chalk on paper, 42 x 30 cm.Per Adolfsen, Snow remains in a fjord landscape, colored pencil, graphite on paper, 42 x 30 cm.Per Adolfsen, Stepping Stones and the trees are watching, 2021, colored pencil, chalk and graphite, 42 x 30 cm.Per Adolfsen, Stepping Stones(Taedsten), 2021, colored pencil, chalk, graphite on paper, 42 x 30 cm.Per Adolfsen, Stone Dike At Dusk, 2022, colored pencil, chalk and graphite on Hahnemuehle paper, 42 x 30 cm.Per Adolfsen, Stonemilker, colored pencil on paper, 42 x 30 cm.Per Adolfsen, Sunset by the sea, 2022, colored pencil on paper, 42 x 30 cm.Per Adolfsen, The Beach, 2022, colored pencil, chalk, and graphite on paper, 42 x 30 cm.Per Adolfsen, The Botanical Garden, 2022, colored pencil, chalk and graphite, 42 x 30 cm.Per Adolfsen, The Edge of the forest, September, 2021, colored pencil, chalk, graphite on paper, 42 x 30 cm.Per Adolfsen, The flooding and the green garden, colored pencil on paper, 2022, 42 x 30 cm.Per Adolfsen, The Pine Tree and the Hills, 2021, colored pencil, chalk and graphite on paper, 42 x 30 cm.Per Adolfsen, The White House Behind The Fence, 2021, colored pencil, graphite and chalk on paper, 60 x 42 cm.Per Adolfsen, The Two Stones, The Island And The Grey Sky, 2022, colored pencil graphite and chalk on Hahnemuehle paper, 42 x 30 cm.Per Adolfsen, Walking Alone in a Summer Nights Dream, 2021, colored pencil, chalk and graphite on paper, 42 x 30 cm.Per Adolfsen, Winter by the Stream II, 2021-2022, colored pencil on paper, 42 x 30 cm.Per Adolfsen, Dawn, 2021, colored pencil, chalk and graphite, 60 x 42 cm.Per Adolfsen, Footprints In Show, 2021-2022, colored pencil, chalk, graphite, on paper, 60 x 42 cm.
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