ArtistNorwegianb.1904–d.1975
Willi Midelfart
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Willi Midelfart was born Johan Wilhelm Midelfart on 4 April 1904 in Oslo, and remained deeply connected to the Norwegian capital throughout his life. He received his first major training at the Académie Scandinave in Paris in 1925–26, studying under Per Krohg and Otte Sköld. He later attended Statens kunstakademi in Oslo under Axel Revold in 1929–30, and returned to the academy under Georg Jacobsen in 1939–40.
Midelfart's early career was shaped by his socialist convictions. He became one of the most prominent tendency artists in Norway during the 1930s, producing politically engaged works, illustrations for labour movement periodicals, and drawings for Arne Garborg's Bondestudentar (1934). In 1936 and 1937 he travelled to Spain during the Civil War, producing sketches of refugees in Alicante and Madrid, including the arresting Refugio Madrid (1937), now held by the Nasjonalmuseet. His friendship with Henrik Sørensen reinforced his social and pacifist outlook.
A visit to Telemark in 1936 marked a turning point. Contact with Norwegian rural landscapes gradually drew him away from political subject matter. Coastal scenes, interiors, and Norwegian nature came to dominate the later decades of his output. He spent time painting at Holmsbu on the western shore of the Oslo fjord, and motifs from that stretch of coastline appear repeatedly in his work from the 1950s and 1960s.
His most publicly visible commission remains the mural Det gror (It grows), painted in the banquet hall of Oslo City Hall in 1947–48. The work depicts beach life along the fjord and is one of many large-scale decorative programmes carried out by Norwegian artists for the hall's opening in 1950.
Midelfart's work is held by the Nasjonalmuseet in Oslo, which has 16 published works in its collection, as well as by the Statens Museum for Kunst in Copenhagen. He died in Oslo on 28 October 1975.
At auction, Midelfart appears primarily through Grev Wedels Plass Auksjoner in Oslo, which accounts for all 32 items in the Auctionist database. Top recorded prices in our data include 35,000 NOK for Atelier and 30,000 NOK for Sittende mann i kystlandskap. Subject matter ranges from Oslo fjord coastal scenes to Paris street life and Norwegian rural landscapes.