ArtistDK
Lis Zwick
3 active items
Lis Zwick was born on 16 August 1942 in Copenhagen, into a family where her mother worked as a photographer and illustrator and her father as a sales manager. She began her working life as an illustrator at the Harlang & Toksvig advertising agency in 1959 before enrolling at Den Grafiske Højskole in Copenhagen. Her path toward painting was redirected when she spent six months at the artist commune Drakabygget near Örkelljunga in Skane, Sweden, in 1962-63, studying under Hardy Strid and Jørgen Nash. She went on to study at the Academy of Fine Arts in Aarhus from 1964 to 1965, and later trained in enamel technique with masters in both France and Sweden.
Drakabygget had been founded in 1961 by Jørgen Nash, the Danish poet and painter who was a co-founder of the Situationist International and younger brother of CoBrA artist Asger Jorn. The commune operated as an anarchist-oriented artistic community on the old border between Sweden and Denmark, attracting artists who rejected institutional art structures in favor of collective and experimental practice. Zwick met Nash again in Copenhagen in the late 1960s, married him in 1969, and moved permanently to Drakabygget, where she remained until her death.
Zwick worked across oil painting, acrylic, gouache, drawing, collage, and printmaking, but enamel became a defining medium. In 1985 she and Nash created a 22-metre-long enamel frieze titled "Der er en aldrig afsluttet sang" (There is a never-finished song) for Copenhagen Central Station, one of the largest enamel public art works in Denmark. An earlier enamel commission, "Poseidon and the Tritons" (1980), was installed at Korsavads swimming hall in Simrishamn. Her sketch for the Drakabygget project "De lekande fåglarna" from 1985 is held at Skissernas Museum in Lund, and her work is also represented in the collection of Moderna Museet in Stockholm.
Zwick exhibited across Scandinavia, Germany, Mexico, Cuba, and Japan from the 1960s onward, with shows including Galleri Heland in Stockholm (1976) and Münchens Konstförening (1976). Her work is held in museum collections at Helsingborg Konstmuseum, Eskilstuna Konstmuseum, Malmö Museum, Göteborgs stads samlingar, and Moderna Museet Mexico City. The book "Nash, Jørgen, Lis Zwick and Drakabygget: The Workshop of Freedom" (2000-2001) documents the commune's artistic output and her central role within it. She died on 22 May 2020.
At auction, Zwick's work appears most frequently at Bidstrup Auktioner, Bruun Rasmussen, Skånes Auktionsverk, and Höganäs Auktionskammare, reflecting a collector base spread across southern Scandinavia. Lithographs, including signed and numbered editions such as "Cocktail Party" (1995) and "Hestens fugl" (1995), have sold for up to 5,000 SEK. The 49 lots recorded on Auctionist span paintings, prints, and drawings. Auction results on Auctionist.