KunstenaarNorwegiangeb.1920–ov.2010
Ludvig Eikaas
0 actieve items
Few Norwegian artists have ranged as widely as Ludvig Eikaas. Across seven decades of restless experimentation, he moved from non-figurative abstraction to portraiture, from woodcuts to lithographs printed on car bonnets, from easel painting to sculptures assembled from found objects. He never settled on a signature style, and that refusal to repeat himself became, paradoxically, the most recognisable thing about him. Born on 20 December 1920 on the farm Eikaas in Jolster, Sogn og Fjordane, he grew up in the fjord landscape of western Norway before moving to Oslo to study at the National College of Art and Design from 1942 to 1946, followed by a period at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen in 1948.
Eikaas emerged in the late 1940s as one of the first Norwegian artists to work in a purely non-figurative idiom. Together with Gunnar S. Gundersen and Odd Tandberg, he formed part of a loose group known informally as Dodsgjengen (The Death Gang), young painters who pushed Norwegian art past its lingering attachment to naturalism. His early canvases and etchings drew heavily on Joan Miro, biomorphic forms floating in colour fields, playful yet compositionally rigorous. By the mid-1950s, however, Eikaas was already moving on, turning toward colourful, rapidly brushed portraits of public figures rendered with an economy that stripped likeness down to a few decisive strokes.
The 1960s and 1970s saw etching and screen printing take centre stage. His graphic output was prolific and technically varied, reflecting the influence of Rolf Nesch in its use of mixed high and low pressure printing to create relief effects in paper. By the 1980s, Eikaas had pushed further still into unconventional territory: black-and-white portraits with split faces tinted green on one side and red on the other, printed via lithography, linocut, and screen print onto surfaces including automobile bonnets. The 1990s brought illustration work, including a series for Ibsen's plays commissioned by the Norwegian Book Club, alongside continued experiments with woodcuts, sculpture, and found-object manipulation.
In 1970, Eikaas was appointed professor at the Norwegian National Academy of Fine Arts, serving as principal from 1981 to 1983. He was married to the textile artist Synnove Anker Aurdal, with whom he won first prize in the Hakonshall competition in 1959 for the design "Primstav." After turning eighty, he was knighted as Knight, First Class of the Royal Norwegian Order of St. Olav. His work is held by the Nasjonalmuseet in Oslo, KODE Bergen, Henie-Onstad Art Centre, Statens Museum for Kunst in Copenhagen, the Brooklyn Museum, and the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. In the early 1990s, he donated over 850 works to his home municipality, which opened the Eikaas Gallery in a converted dairy at Alhus in 1994.
On Auctionist, 131 Eikaas lots are recorded, the vast majority through Grev Wedels Plass Auksjoner. Prints, etchings, and graphic works dominate the listings, reflecting the centrality of printmaking to his practice. His top auction result is a striking 200,000 NOK for "Torvet Bergen 1969," with other paintings reaching 70,000 NOK and 46,000 NOK. For collectors seeking Norwegian postwar art with genuine historical weight, Eikaas offers range and depth that few contemporaries can match.