ArtistNorwegianb.1966
Vebjørn Sand
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Vebjørn Sand was born on 11 March 1966 in Bærum, Norway, and grew up on the coastal islands of Hvaler, where his father Øivind Sand taught at a Waldorf school and worked as a painter. That upbringing placed art, mathematics, and natural science alongside each other from the start, an orientation that would later define his cross-disciplinary practice. At sixteen he toured Norway as a caricature artist, painting roughly 3,000 portraits across three summers.
He trained at the Norwegian National Academy of Fine Arts in Oslo from 1986 to 1988, followed by a year at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, then returned to Oslo before later studying at the Art Students League of New York. In 1991, while painting landscapes in Valdres using oil paint, he developed turpentine poisoning that caused lasting visual disturbances and chronic headaches. Forced to abandon oil, he turned toward acrylic and, finding the medium of the time inadequate for his purposes, shifted his primary focus to outdoor and public work.
His best-known project is the Leonardo Bridge, completed in 2001 near Ås, Norway - a laminated-wood parabolic footbridge over European route E18, realised in partnership with the Norwegian Public Roads Administration. The bridge is a scaled interpretation of a 1502 sketch by Leonardo da Vinci, originally proposed for Sultan Bayezid II to span the Golden Horn in Istanbul. The Wall Street Journal described it as "a bridge to everywhere" and Wired Magazine named it among the five most beautiful bridges in the world. A second major permanent work is the Kepler Star (also called the Norwegian Peace Star or Keplerstjernen), a 45-metre sculptural installation at Oslo Airport, Gardermoen, inaugurated in connection with the 1999 Nobel Peace Prize ceremony.
In 1997 Sand exhibited paintings made during two expeditions to Antarctica in a temporary outdoor installation in Oslo called "Trollslottet" (The Troll Castle). The structure attracted 150,000 visitors and became the most attended exhibition by a contemporary artist in Norwegian history at that time. These works, stored inside glass cases to evoke the sensation of ice, were subsequently featured in a four-city American touring exhibition titled "Ad Fontes" in 1998-1999, shown at the American Institute of Architects in Washington DC, Minneapolis College of Art and Design, SOMARTS in San Francisco, and the Nordic Heritage Museum in Seattle. His later project "Scenes from the Second World War" opened in Oslo in March 2015, and in April 2017 he exhibited a large-scale response to Picasso's Guernica in Oslo.
At auction, Sand's work circulates primarily through Grev Wedels Plass Auksjoner in Oslo, which accounts for all 14 lots in the database. Top results include "Sydlandsk landskap med kloster" at 15,000 NOK and a copy of the "Ad fontes" graphic portfolio at 10,000 NOK. Other recorded titles include "Arnesteinen," "Aften på Vestlandet," and "Post mortem," reflecting both his landscape subjects and his interest in thematic series.