KunstenaarNorwegian
Håkon Bleken
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Håkon Ingvald Bleken was born on 9 January 1929 in Trondheim into a family with strong intellectual roots - his father was an architect and school headmaster, his mother a municipal administrator. That background in professional seriousness and civic responsibility left a mark on the moral weight his work would later carry. He began his formal art education in Trondheim under Karsten Keiseraas and Oddvar Alstad before moving to Oslo to study at the Norwegian National Academy of Fine Arts under Jean Heiberg from 1949 to 1952. His debut exhibition followed in 1951 at Trondhjems kunstforening, the institution he would return to more than thirty times over his career.
In 1956, a fall caused a severe head injury that forced a three-year interruption and multiple hospital stays. Unable to work in oils during recovery, he turned to charcoal drawing - a medium that would define much of his graphic output. Bleken later described the illness as something that helped him mature and taught him compassion; it deepened his preoccupation with vulnerability, suffering, and what it means to endure. When he returned to sustained work, he also took up a research position at the Institute of Form and Colour Studies at the Norwegian Institute of Technology, where he worked from 1960 to 1972.
His artistic breakthrough came in the late 1960s and early 1970s with three travelling series of charcoal drawings: Fragmenter av et diktatur (Fragments of a Dictatorship), Fragmenter av kjærlighet (Fragments of Love), and Fragmenter av sannheten (Fragments of Truth). The first series, acquired by the National Museum in Oslo, dealt directly with totalitarianism and the persecution of Jews. Bleken said openly that the Holocaust represented for him the "ultimate injustice," and that moral grounding anchored his career through decades of stylistic evolution. His work draws on the Bible, classical literature, Ibsen, Hamsun, Knut Hamsun's Mysteries, Karen Blixen's Babette's Feast, and contemporary politics - never treating these sources as mere decoration but as tests for human conduct.
Bleken's range of media was wide: oil painting, charcoal, lithography, collage, stained glass, and book illustration. His church commissions became major undertakings. Between 1984 and 1988 he created twelve side windows and a three-part stained glass decoration for Vålerenga kirke in Oslo. In Spjelkavik kirke in Ålesund (2002-2007) he produced 96 permanent stained glass windows depicting Bible narratives - his largest single commission. He also illustrated Ibsen's Hedda Gabler, producing the Ibsenmappe graphic series, and contributed illustrations to works by Arne Garborg and Kjartan Fløgstad. In 2008 he donated an entire collection to Trondheim kunstmuseum, where his preparatory drawings for the church commissions are preserved. His 90th birthday in 2019 prompted a major retrospective, "Do Not Go Gentle," produced jointly by Trondheim kunstmuseum and Henie Onstad Kunstsenter. He died in Trondheim on 21 January 2025, aged 96.
On the auction market, Bleken's work trades almost entirely in Norway. Grev Wedels Plass Auksjoner in Oslo accounts for 49 of the 54 auction appearances recorded in Nordic databases, with Nyborgs Auksjoner handling most of the remainder. Oils reach the highest prices: Liv og død (2011) sold for 115,000 NOK, and Ishockey Vår (1989) for 90,000 NOK. The Trilogi over Adrians smerte series brought 62,000 NOK, while prints from the Ibsenmappe: Hedda Gabler series have appeared in the 50,000 NOK range. Graphic works and smaller prints sell at more accessible levels. His absence from Swedish auction houses points to how firmly he belongs to the Norwegian art historical canon rather than the broader Scandinavian market.