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INTRODUCTION
Rasmus Skov is in a
unique position as the most prolific and productive Neo-cubist painter in Denmark. His Cubist paintings from the forty year period
after the second World War demonstrate the most comprehensive penetration
in depth and duration into Cubism of any Scandinavian artist.
Skov was born in Denmark in 1907, coinciding with the initial
breakthrough in France of Cubism, the new art form which is generally
acknowledged as the revolutionary step in the development of modern art leading
to the subsequent abstract art movements. His education included decorative
art school and painter’s apprenticeships beginning in 1924 in Copenhagen and continuing in Munich, Germany in 1931, followed by extensive travels in Southern Europe. He was recognized early as a talented, creative
artist and skillful draftsman with considerable inventive powers. His work
is characterized throughout by his superb sense of composition, an
unfailing attention to careful craftsmanship, and his often uniquely conceived
and strikingly beautiful color combinations. He devoted himself entirely to
artistic painting starting in 1934, but had already begun to paint
seriously at the age of 22, during his first trip to France in 1929. Within the span of fifty-five years he
created more than one thousand paintings and as many drawings, prints and
watercolors which together document his remarkably continuous aesthetic
development.
While studying in Munich during 1931-1932, Skov was exposed to the
philosophy of the New Realism art movement, and he also became aware of the
work by the abstract art at Bauhaus. He initially started out as a realist
painter based on the Neo-impressionism and an intuitive affinity for
Cezannian aesthetics. However, as he progressed in his development during
the next fifteen years, his work became increasingly abstract in
expression. Yet, he never abandoned the figurative object as a key element
in his work. His experimentation with the aesthetics of Cubism, beginning
in the late 1930’s, led him eventually to the development of his personal
version of Neo-cubism, which he then continued to explore with prolific
energy and creativity during the next fifty years. This long dedication to
the continued development of the Cubist idiom places Skov in the position
of being the foremost Neo-cubist painter in Denmark and Scandinavia.
Skov’s deeply felt
aesthetic ideal of beauty, expressed through the creation of integrated
balances of composition and color harmonies echoes throughout his work; yet
he realized before he was forty that the creative artist is
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