ArtistNorwegianb.1924–d.2003
Odd Tandberg
0 active items
Odd Tandberg was born in Oslo on 16 April 1924 into a city that had yet to find its postwar artistic identity. He began formal studies in 1941 at Bjarne Engebrets' painting school, then moved to the Norwegian National Academy of Craft and Art Industry from 1942 to 1945, and finally to the Norwegian National Academy of Fine Arts where he studied under Axel Revold and Per Krohg. These were foundational years in the classical mode, but it was a series of extended travels between 1946 and 1956 that transformed his practice entirely.
Paris in the late 1940s and early 1950s was where the decisive shift happened. Moving in circles around the Denise René Gallery - the nerve centre of European concrete and kinetic art - Tandberg was drawn into a generation of artists for whom pure form, colour, and spatial movement were sufficient subjects in themselves. He returned to Norway carrying the vocabulary of geometric abstraction and soon became one of the most consequential figures in establishing non-figurative art in Scandinavia.
The clearest expression of that ambition came through architecture. Between 1956 and 1958, Tandberg was among a select group of abstract painters, alongside Inger Sitter and Carl Nesjar, commissioned to integrate artworks directly into the new Oslo Government Building complex. Working with the experimental material naturbetong - a sandblasted natural concrete developed by architect Erling Viksjø - and later co-developing conglo concrete with incorporated natural stone aggregates, Tandberg created wall decorations on the 5th and 9th floors whose surface texture and geometry became inseparable from the building itself. In 1965 he contributed decorations to the Nationaltheatret subway station, and in 1977 to Stortinget station, leaving a quiet but durable presence throughout Oslo's public infrastructure.
Beyond these architectural commissions, Tandberg built a sustained studio practice in painting and printmaking. His canvases from the 1950s and 1960s explore the tension between geometry and optical vibration - works that sit at the threshold between static composition and perceived movement. Several entered the collection of the Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo, including the kinetic painting from 1970 that the museum regards as among its highlights of postwar art. In 2007 he was appointed Knight, First Class of the Order of St. Olav, recognising a career of more than six decades.
On the Nordic auction market, Tandberg's work circulates almost exclusively through Grev Wedels Plass Auksjoner in Oslo, which accounts for all 20 lots recorded in the Auctionist database. His compositions from the 1950s and early 1960s command the highest prices, with a 2006 composition reaching 73,000 NOK and a 1956 work achieving 60,000 NOK. Prints and works on paper appear alongside paintings, with categories spanning Art, Prints and Engravings, and Paintings.