ArtistNorwegian
Alexander Schultz
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Alexander Schultz was born on 25 May 1901 in Kristiania and spent the formative years of his life between Norway and Paris. After his father's death in 1917, he left for France, where he lived and worked largely from 1919 to around 1935. His principal teachers there were the French post-Fauvist Othon Friesz and the Norwegian painter Henrik Sørensen, both of whom worked in the tradition that ran from Cézanne through Cubism's formal grammar. Through them Schultz absorbed a way of constructing a picture from color relationships rather than from line or tonal contrast - an approach that would define his painting for the rest of his career.
On returning to Norway he continued to refine his practice at Statens Kunstakademi in Oslo from 1935 to 1937, studying under Jean Heiberg and the Danish art theorist Georg Jacobsen. These years consolidated a method that was analytical and structural while remaining lyrical in feeling. Schultz painted landscapes, portraits, and still lifes with thin, luminous layers of oil that gave his surfaces a quality more often associated with watercolor. Light was treated as something that could be organized rather than simply observed.
His breakthrough came with an exhibition at Kunstnernes Hus in 1949. By the mid-1950s his standing in Norwegian art was firmly established: in 1955 he was appointed professor at Statens Kunstakademi, and from 1958 to 1965 he served as the academy's director. In a letter written late in his career, Schultz described himself as one of the last representatives of the French line in Norwegian art - a line whose transmission he saw as a responsibility. His students included Kåre Tveter, Frans Widerberg, Rolf Aamot, and Odd Nerdrum, who studied under him from 1963 to 1965. The depth of that line of influence is substantial: Nerdrum alone became one of the most discussed Scandinavian painters of the late twentieth century.
In 1964, an exhibition at Galleri Haaken brought him wider public recognition as one of the finest colorists in Norwegian painting of his generation. The NIA exhibition "Røtter og vinger" examined his connection to French modernism in depth, assembling some fifty works spanning 1925 to 1981 - landscapes, still lifes, and portraits that showed the range and consistency of his approach across more than five decades.
On the auction market, Schultz's work appears almost exclusively at Norwegian houses. The database on Auctionist records 53 lots, predominantly through Grev Wedels Plass Auksjoner in Oslo and Nyborgs Auksjoner. Top realized prices in NOK include 30,000 NOK for "Apuaner Alpene," 24,000 NOK for "Okseforspann 1957," and 21,000 NOK for "Landskap med hus." International databases place his auction record at approximately 6,872 USD for a work sold at Christiania Auctions in 2021. Works are primarily oil on canvas landscapes, with occasional figure studies and portraits. Prices are modest relative to his historical influence, suggesting that his market has not yet followed the broader reappraisal of mid-century Norwegian painting.