ArtistNorwegianb.1910–d.1994
Per Palle Storm
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Per Palle Storm was born in Copenhagen on 1 December 1910, but his formative years unfolded far from Scandinavia. His family moved to Buenos Aires, where he grew up and received his first serious sculpture instruction from the Spanish sculptors Bartholomé Tasso and Urbici Soler between 1927 and 1929. That early training in Argentina, with its mixture of European academic tradition and Latin American cultural energy, gave Storm an unusually broad foundation before he ever set foot in a Norwegian art institution.
In 1930 he returned to Europe, passing through Italy and Berlin before settling in Oslo to study at the Statens kunstakademi under Wilhelm Rasmussen. He completed his formal academy training in 1933 and then rented a studio in Paris, where he spent time studying classical sculpture and engaging with the legacy of Rodin. The influence of Rodin's attention to the surface of the human body, the way flesh and tension are captured in bronze or stone, runs through much of Storm's figurative work. He also traveled to Germany, Spain, France, and Italy during the 1930s, absorbing the range of European sculptural traditions at a moment when figurative sculpture was negotiating between academic convention and modernist abstraction.
Storm's career as a public sculptor began in earnest in 1939, when he won the competition for a monument to the Olympic cross-country skier Thorleif Haug, subsequently erected in Drammen. The commission announced his ability to work at a scale and with a physical authority suited to public space. Through the 1940s and 1950s he produced the six bronze figures that stand outside Oslo City Hall - Handlangeren, Elektrikeren, Steinhoggeren (all 1950), Mureren (1951), Tømmermannen (1954), and Steinbryteren (1960) - a series representing working men in the trades that built the city. These figures, solid and dignified in their labour, became among the most recognisable sculpture in the Norwegian capital. His group Arbeiderbevegelsens pionerer, unveiled at Youngstorget in Oslo in 1958, extended the same interest in collective working-class history into a monumental context.
In 1947, Storm was appointed professor at the Statens kunstakademi, where he taught until 1980. His students included Oddmund Raudberget. In 1993, the year before his death, he and his wife Ingeborg established Ingeborg og Per Palle Storms Legat, an endowment that continues to support sculptors living and working in Norway. He was awarded the King's Medal of Merit in 1950, appointed Knight First Class of the Order of St. Olav in 1980, and decorated with the Danish Order of the Dannebrog. His works are held in the Nasjonalmuseet, including animal studies, figure drawings, and bronzes. He died in Oslo on 6 January 1994.
At auction, Storm appears in 12 records, with works selling at Grev Wedels Plass Auksjoner and Nyborgs Auksjoner. The top result is a sculpture titled 'Eve' at NOK 165,000. Other significant sales include 'Stående akt med klede over hodet' at NOK 76,000 and 'Kvinne som sitter på huk' at NOK 50,000, reflecting strong demand for his figurative bronzes and plasters depicting the female form.