ArtistNorwegianb.1910–d.1999
Ferdinand Finne
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Ferdinand Oscar Finne was born on 12 October 1910 in Kristiania - the city that would become Oslo - into a household that belonged to the Norwegian capital's upper bourgeoisie. His grandfather had served as chamberlain to King Oscar II; his father practised law. His parents divorced when he was young, and his mother moved with the children to Britain, an early displacement that set the tone for a life lived across several countries and artistic disciplines.
In the mid-1930s, Finne joined Nationaltheatret in Oslo as costume chief, a role he held from around 1934 to 1938, designing costumes and working across theatrical production. When Germany occupied Norway in April 1940, Finne was already in London. He reported to the Norwegian embassy and remained in Britain, where he began his formal training as a painter under Oskar Kokoschka - the Austrian expressionist who had himself fled Vienna after the Anschluss and was then working in England. The encounter with Kokoschka's charged, psychologically intense approach to colour and form left a permanent mark. After the war, Finne returned to Oslo and studied at the National Art Academy under Per Krogh and Jean Heiberg, before a period in Paris with Fernand Léger that further extended his frame of reference.
He made his formal debut as a visual artist in 1954, relatively late given the breadth of experience already behind him. For the next three decades he worked steadily, painting, making graphic works, and writing - publishing the memoir Den grønne lagune in 1967, an autobiographical account Såvidt jeg husker in 1974, and in 1985 Veien blir til mens du går (translated roughly as The Road Becomes as You Walk). A television presentation of that last book in the autumn of 1985 brought him national attention at the age of seventy-five. The book's mixture of esoteric reflection, autobiographical candour, and philosophical observation connected with a wide public in a way his visual work alone had not yet managed.
The momentum carried directly into his painting career. His 80th birthday retrospective at the Henie Onstad Art Center in Bærum in 1990 drew 74,000 visitors - a record for the institution at the time - and introduced audiences to large-scale abstract graphic works, some composed of multiple prints and several drawing on Arne Nordheim's music as a structural reference. His work is represented in the National Gallery of Norway, and he was decorated Knight First Class of the Royal Norwegian Order of St. Olav in 1991. He continued working until near the end of his life, dying on New Year's Eve 1999.
At auction in the Nordic market, Finne's work appears at Grev Wedels Plass Auksjoner (14 of 20 recorded items) and Nyborgs Auksjoner (6 items). The 20 items in the Auctionist database are all now closed, with prices at a modest level relative to his institutional standing: top results include Fra Narestø at NOK 15,000 and Det gule Sørlands interiør (1965) at NOK 10,500, with southern European landscapes - from Spain and Copenhagen - rounding out the top sales. The auction record does not yet reflect the scale of his late-career recognition.