KunstenaarNorwegiangeb.1921–ov.1983
Gunnar S. Gundersen
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A circle segment hovers against a flat plane of cobalt blue, its edge razor-sharp, its surface appearing to recede into a space that cannot physically exist on canvas. This is what Gunnar S. Gundersen called "inconsistent space": compositions where flat painted surfaces seem to expand, orbit, and recede from one another, creating perceptual instability through pure geometry and color. He was the foremost Norwegian practitioner of Concrete art, and the only one to maintain and develop its formal language consistently over three decades.
Born on Christmas Day 1921 in Førde, Western Norway, Gundersen trained at the State School of Crafts and Industrial Art (SHKS) in Oslo and at the State Academy of Fine Art under Aage Storstein. A 1949 study trip to Paris, funded by the Helga and Hans Reusch Legacy, brought him into direct contact with the European constructivist movement, particularly Victor Vasarely and Auguste Herbin. He returned to Oslo and debuted at the Høstutstillingen (Autumn Exhibition) with both paintings and etchings.
Gundersen was a central figure in "Dødsgjengen" (Death's Gang), an informal group of young Norwegian artists including Ludvig Eikaas and Odd Tandberg who pushed Norwegian art toward abstraction in the postwar years. In 1950, he and Eikaas won the competition for the Kunstnerforbundet building facade in Oslo, one of the first major non-figurative public commissions in the country. He co-founded the artist group Terningen in 1956, dedicated to concrete and abstract art, and from the late 1950s his style consolidated into the sharp-contoured geometric vocabulary he would refine for the rest of his life: circles, ellipse segments, and rectangles set against flat color planes with calibrated optical tension.
His later works, from the 1960s onward, took on what critics described as "an almost cosmic dimension," with voluminous forms appearing to float in unlimited imaginary space. From the late 1960s, he devoted significant energy to silkscreen printing, developing a technique that achieved iridescent, metallically precise color effects. He represented Norway at two São Paulo Biennials (1955, 1959), the 4th Guggenheim International at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York (1964), the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles in Paris (1965-1967), and the 34th Venice Biennale (1968).
The Nasjonalmuseet in Oslo holds 75 of his works, the largest institutional collection. His pieces are also in the Bergen Billedgalleri (KODE), the Henie Onstad Art Center, and the Rolf Stenersen Collection. A dedicated gallery, Gunnar S. Galleriet, opened in his honour in Høyanger in 2018. A bilingual monograph by Jan Kokkin (Arnoldsche Art Publishers, 288 pages) confirmed his canonical status in Norwegian art history.
On Auctionist, Gundersen's market is concentrated almost entirely at Grev Wedels Plass Auksjoner (GWPA) in Oslo, which accounts for 257 of his 264 lots. Art and paintings dominate, with prints and engravings forming a secondary market. His auction record is 850,000 NOK for "Komposisjon" (1952), sold in June 2024 well above its 500,000-600,000 NOK estimate. A second composition sold the same month for 810,000 NOK (estimate 300,000-400,000), and multiple works from the 1960s have reached 600,000 NOK. The strong 2023-2024 results signal renewed collector interest after a period of relative undervaluation, positioning Gundersen as one of the most compelling auction performers in Norwegian post-war art.