ArtistNorwegianb.1882–d.1959
Xan Krohn
0 active items
Born Christian Cornelius Krohn in Bergen on June 15, 1882, the painter who became known as Xan Krohn grew up with an unstable family background - his parents emigrated separately to the United States when he was a child, leaving him to find his own path. He enrolled at the Royal Drawing School in Bergen in 1899 and spent three years building his technical foundation before the pull of international study became irresistible.
In 1905, Krohn entered the Russian Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg, where he studied in the studio of Ilya Repin, the towering figure of Russian realism. A year later the academy closed following political unrest, and Krohn moved to Munich to study with Simon Hollósy before continuing to Paris, where he immersed himself simultaneously in the Académie Colarossi and the Académie de la Grande Chaumière. By 1908 he had settled with his wife, the Russian artist Julie de Holmberg, in Kyiv.
It was in Kyiv that Krohn found his most consequential artistic connections. Through a friendship with Aleksandra Ekster - who would become one of the great names of the Russian avant-garde - he was drawn into the orbit of the Knave of Diamonds movement, a Moscow-based group that took Cézanne and French Post-Impressionism as a springboard rather than a destination. Krohn participated in the group's second exhibition in 1912, contributing seven canvases, and returned for the fourth in 1916 with twenty works, becoming the only non-Russian participant during those wartime years when border restrictions made such involvement genuinely difficult.
His work across this period ranged across landscapes, portraits, figure studies and urban scenes. The titles that survive - "Hvite netter" (White Nights, 1910), harbour views from Singapore, images from Hawaii, streets in Paris - suggest an artist who moved restlessly and looked at the world with curiosity rather than nostalgia. He and his wife also participated in the sixth and final Knave of Diamonds exhibition in 1917, just months before the October Revolution made their continued life in Russia impossible.
Krohn returned to Oslo in late 1917, bringing his family through the upheaval. His later years in Norway included work as a decorative painter at the National Theatre and sea voyages that took him across Africa and Asia. In 1950 he published a memoir, "En vagabonds vandring på jorden" (A vagabond's journey on earth), which gathered the experience of a life spent on multiple continents. He died in Oslo on October 30, 1959.
At auction, Krohn's work appears primarily at Norwegian houses. Grev Wedels Plass Auksjoner and Nyborgs Auksjoner account for the majority of the 16 recorded lots in the Auctionist database. Top results include a Campari poster design from 1934 that achieved 130,000 NOK, a harbour scene at 33,000 NOK, and a double nude study ("Dobbelakt") at 26,000 NOK. The Wikidata identifier is Q12010843.