KunstenaarNorwegian
Carl Nesjar
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Born Carl Carlsen on 6 July 1920 in Larvik, on the Norwegian coast south of Oslo, he spent part of his childhood in the Bay Ridge neighbourhood of Brooklyn before returning to Norway. He adopted the surname Nesjar early in his career, drawing it from the Old Norse word for the coastal stretch around his birthplace. His formal training spanned continents: the Pratt Institute and Columbia University in New York, art schools in Oslo, and from 1953 to 1955 a productive stay in Paris where he worked at Stanley William Hayter's Atelier 17 on intaglio printmaking and studied lithography with Jean Pons.
Nesjar's pivotal technical contribution was the co-development, alongside architect Erling Viksjø, of betograve - a method in which concrete is poured around tightly packed natural gravel, allowed to set, and then selectively sandblasted to expose the aggregate beneath, leaving engraved lines and textured surfaces. The technique was used on several Oslo government buildings in the 1950s, producing wall engravings of permanent, monumental scale.
In 1957, Nesjar visited Picasso in the south of France carrying photographs of these betograve walls. Picasso's response was immediate - he reportedly ran through the house showing the images to his cook and chauffeur, excited that he had found a material capable of scaling his line drawings into permanent outdoor works. Their collaboration lasted from 1958 until Picasso's death in 1973, producing more than 30 sculptures and relief murals. Among the most visible are the Fiskerne (The Fishermen) sandblasted on the facade of Oslo's Y-Block, the 36-foot, 60-ton Bust of Sylvette at New York University in Greenwich Village, and works sited at Princeton, MIT, and in France, Spain and Israel.
Beyond the Picasso partnership, Nesjar maintained a parallel career as a painter and printmaker. He showed at Høstutstillingen, Norway's main annual open exhibition, from 1949 and held solo exhibitions throughout the following decades, including shows at Haugar Vestfold Kunstmuseum and Bærum Kunstforening. He also developed a series of Ice Fountains installed in cities across several countries. The Nasjonalmuseet in Oslo holds works from multiple periods of his career. He died in Oslo on 23 May 2015 at the age of 94.
On the Nordic auction market, Nesjar's works appear exclusively at Grev Wedels Plass Auksjoner in Oslo, where 21 items have been recorded in total. Prices for paintings and works on paper have ranged from around 20,000 NOK to highs of 54,000 NOK for the 2010 painting Storm and 50,000 NOK for Flowing Water (2012), placing him in the mid-range of post-war Norwegian artists at auction.