ArtistNorwegianb.1895–d.1979
Alf Rolfsen
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Alf Rolfsen was born on 28 January 1895 in Kristiania, the son of the writer Nordahl Rolfsen, author of the schoolbook that shaped the reading of generations of Norwegian children. Growing up in a literary household gave him an attentiveness to narrative that would later inform the epic ambitions of his monumental murals.
His artistic education began in Copenhagen, where he studied under the Danish painter Peter Rostrup Bøyesen from 1913 to 1916 and made his public debut that same year. After the First World War he travelled to Paris, studying there from 1919 to 1920. The encounter with André Derain proved decisive: Derain's post-Impressionist use of structure, simplified form, and bold colour would leave a lasting imprint on Rolfsen's compositional thinking. He returned to Oslo and held his first solo exhibition in the city in 1920.
Through the 1920s and early 1930s Rolfsen built a reputation as a painter attentive both to the human figure and to architectural context. In 1932 he won the competition for the decoration of Vestre Krematorium at Vestre gravlund in Oslo, completing the work between 1932 and 1937. The frescoes trace humanity's journey from birth to death, culminating in a large back wall in which liberation is figured through the imagery of a tree of life. The commission established him as the foremost mural painter working in Norway.
In 1938 the city of Oslo commissioned Rolfsen to decorate three walls in the Central Hall of Oslo City Hall, a building that would open in 1950 and that has hosted the annual Nobel Peace Prize ceremony since 1990. The northern wall carries 'Arbeidets Norge fra de drivende garn til skovene i øst', a panoramic celebration of Norwegian working life. The western wall depicts 'St. Hallvard', the patron saint of Oslo. The eastern wall, approximately thirty metres long, bears 'Okkupasjonshistorien', which documents the German occupation of Norway during the Second World War in unflinching pictorial terms. These three murals constitute the most significant cycle of Norwegian public art in the twentieth century.
Later in his career Rolfsen carried out the decoration of Haugesund City Hall between 1952 and 1954, adding another major civic commission to a body of work already unmatched in Norway for its scale. He also worked as a portraitist and easel painter, with works entering the collection of the Nasjonalmuseet.
His honours reflect the regard in which he was held both in Norway and internationally. He was decorated Knight of the Swedish Order of the Polar Star in 1937. In 1951 he received the Prince Eugen Medal from Sweden. In 1955 he was appointed Commander of the Royal Norwegian Order of St. Olav. He died in Oslo on 10 November 1979, aged eighty-four.