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serving a coffee roasting and packaging plant. Inspired by this
unusual view, Skov made a series of drawings and paintings during 1948 -
1949 showing these structures as cubist cityscapes, the aging cyclones and
smoke stacks rising from the slate tile roofs at precarious angels that
were motivated less by artistic licence than by actual observation. These
complex cityscapes obviously provided serious challenges for the artist to
overcome with respect to both the composition and the representational
features, rather like a jig-saw-puzzle to be first disassembled and then
reassembled.
Skov’s pictorial
treatment, which combined some of the features of both analytical and
synthetic Cubism together, shows the assuredness with which he already was
capable of formulating his perception of the cityscape in accordance with
this idiom. For over a year he continued to analyze this motif which
appears in more than fifteen paintings, all the while developing
simultaneously his new amalgamated Neo-cubist medium of expression, and
persisting until he felt he had fully understood the applicability of
Cubism to the cityscape.
The central
location of Krystalgade was advantageous, Skov found, because of its close
proximity, within ten minutes walking distance or less, to most of the
cultural centers of activity, including the many art museums and galleries,
theaters and concert halls in downtown Copenhagen. At the same time it was only a short distance
from the green-belt of large parks and tree-lined avenues that form a continuous
half moon around the old City, stretching from the South-harbor and Tivoli in the south-west to Kastellet and Langelinie in
the north-east. The several water-fronts formed by “The Three Lakes” and
the inner Copenhagen harbor that together form a second ring of open areas,
all within about a twenty minutes walk, also provided a variety of
delightful all-weather walks where Skov could observe the seasonal changes
of nature. Through the years it was a rare day when Skov did not take
advantage of these varied opportunities to walk for several hours, alone or
with members of the family, both for the exercise and in order to enjoy the
interaction of the light and wind with the trees, flowers and water, under
the forever changing Danish sky.
As a teenage boy in Strib, Skov had
enjoyed sailing with small boats in the coastal waters around Lillebaelt;
and in 1950 he acquired a large sailboat so as to provide an escape from
the city for the family. This single masted, forty-eight foot ocean-going
racing yacht had bunk-spaces for the entire family; and during the
following ten years Skov spent most holidays and school vacations cruising
about the Danish waterways, visiting the many small harbors and islands in
the archipelago of more than three hundred islands and peninsulas.
During the years
immediately after the war, Copenhagen had become
a refuge for artists because it remained unharmed while many of the
traditional
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