ArtistNorwegianb.1908–d.1987
Reidar Fritzvold
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Reidar Fritzvold was born in Norway in 1920 and trained at Statens kunstakademi in Oslo under Axel Revold, one of Norway's leading painters of the interwar period. He also studied graphic art under Chrix Dahl. His first public appearance came with a group exhibition at Kunstnerforbundet in Oslo in 1940, followed by inclusion in the group show "6 unge" (Six Young Artists) at the same venue in 1942.
Fritzvold's painting drew from two seemingly opposing tendencies in Norwegian art history. He acknowledged a deep debt to August Cappelen, the 19th-century Romantic who painted dark, atmospheric forest interiors, and to Erik Werenskiold, whose approach was more measured and documentary. The tension between those two influences - the lyrical and the factual - runs through Fritzvold's best landscape work. He was consistently described by Norwegian critics as a sober and objective painter of nature, yet his color choices carry a directness, even a harshness, that goes beyond neutral description.
His favored subjects were the mountain landscapes of West-Telemark and the Setesdal valley, regions of stark geological character and light that changes dramatically with the seasons. He returned to the same places across decades, producing paintings like "Nomeland. Valle i Setesdal" (1960) and "Høstmorgen ved Bossvatn" (1964) that document Norwegian terrain without sentimentalizing it. He also painted harbor scenes from along the Norwegian coast and, intermittently, from Spain and Italy.
Beyond landscape, Fritzvold was recognized as one of the more accomplished portrait painters of his generation. His sitters included members of the Norwegian royal family and senior government figures, a commission type that required a different kind of discipline from his outdoor work. The range - from unworked mountain light to formal portraiture - points to a career that resisted easy categorization.
His work entered collections across Norway with notable breadth. The Royal Palace, the National Gallery, Nasjonalmuseet, the Norwegian Arts Council, and the Oslo City Museum all hold examples. In total, paintings, lithographs, and drawings by Fritzvold are represented in 43 Norwegian museums, as well as in many private collections. Galleri Pingvin in Oslo became his regular gallery during the last decade of his life.
Fritzvold died in 1998. On the Nordic auction market, his work has been sold exclusively through Grev Wedels Plass Auksjoner in Oslo, which accounts for all 16 items in the Auctionist database. Prices at auction have ranged from around 3,000 NOK for smaller harbor and birch-forest scenes up to 40,000 NOK for larger landscape paintings. The highest recorded sale was for a work titled "Landskap" at 40,000 NOK, with "Skogslandskap med vann" reaching 15,000 NOK. Telemark and Setesdal subjects tend to attract the strongest results.