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Odd Nerdrum

Odd Nerdrum is an extraordinarily talented painter, born in Norway in 1944. His work may be viewed at the Metropolitan Museum in New York; the San Diego Museum in San Diego, California; the Walker Art Museum, Minneapolis; the Milwaukee Museum of Art, Milwaukee; and the Gothenburg Museum in Gothenburg, Sweden; as well as the National Gallery in Oslo, Norway.

Nerdrum had his first one person gallery exhibition in New York at the Martina Hamilton Gallery in 1983. Miss Hamilton was the worldwide representative for Nerdrum for 15 years.

Nerdrum’s method of painting is an old world discipline of mixing and grinding his own pigments, stretching his canvas and the exclusive use of models. He has been using this method since he was 16 years old.

The imagery in the 6 to 8 paintings produced yearly falls into 3 basic categories:

 

Small still life paintings which depict a single image such as a baby, a brick or a set of dentures. These images are never placed on a table or platform of any kind but rather gain their stability exclusively through the handling of the media.

 Portraits and self-portraits - generally without background, dressed in skins and cloaks from another time.

 Large scale allegorical paintings which depict a time after our own civilization. The figures are again dressed as above and the landscape backgrounds are done from studies made on repeated trips to Iceland.

Odd Nerdrum has an extensive knowledge of art history and an in depth schooling in philosophy of the ages. He is obsessive about his work, his ideas, and his politics. All of which have greatly affected younger painters worldwide.