KunstenaarDanishgeb.1916–ov.2003
Mogens Andersen
7 actieve items
The mural that Mogens Andersen completed for Copenhagen's Central Library on Kultorvet between 1957 and 1959 provoked sharp public debate. Abstract decoration in a civic building was still a contested idea in Denmark at the time, and the work landed him at the center of a larger argument about what public art could and should be. He weathered the controversy, and the commissions that followed - a ceramic decoration for the Bochum Museum of Art in Germany (1981) and the interior of Sejs-Svejbæk Church near Silkeborg (1990) - show how thoroughly the ground shifted in his favor over the decades.
Andersen was born in Copenhagen on 8 August 1916 and trained at P. Rostrup Bøyesen's painting school from 1933 to 1939, showing for the first time at Kunstnernes Efterårsudstilling in 1935. His earliest canvases were earthy, pastose figure paintings in the tradition of the Danish "dark painters" - Svend Guttorm and Niels Lergaard among them. But he was drawn elsewhere. After the war, he spent extended periods in Paris from 1945 until around 1965, and French lyrical abstraction became the decisive force in his development.
In Paris, Andersen formed close friendships with Pierre Soulages and Jean Bazaine, two painters whose approaches to gestural abstraction - one built on the expressive weight of black, the other on color-light relationships - gave him a formal foundation for his own practice. From this engagement he developed what became his signature: dark, dynamic arabesques moving across a lighter background, a visual language that combined the calligraphic energy of gestural painting with a structural clarity that kept it from dissolving into pure expression.
Beyond painting, Andersen was a productive writer and thinker. His books include "Modern French Painting" (1948), "Around the Sources" (1967), and several memoirs. He taught at Rostrup Bøyesen's school from 1952 to 1959, and served as chair of the Statens Kunstfond from 1977 to 1980 - a position of real institutional influence over Danish cultural policy. In 1999 he lost his sight and could no longer paint. He died on 18 April 2003.
His work is held in the collection of Statens Museum for Kunst, and his public decorations remain in place in Copenhagen and Germany. On the Nordic auction market, he appears almost exclusively through Bruun Rasmussen, with 32 of his 35 catalogued Auctionist items appearing at their Copenhagen and Aarhus rooms. Works at auction span paintings, lithographs, and ceramics. The top result in the database is DKK 32,000 for a 1973 composition, while his lithographic series "Moya - Syv japanske sange" (1981, made in collaboration with composer Vagn Holmboe) recurs at 4,600-6,500 DKK, reflecting consistent collector interest in his print work.