|
THE 1956
EXHIBITION AND ESSAY
1956
In late January
1956, Gallery d’Art Moderne, an art gallery associated with Nordisk
Kunsthandel located in the center of Copenhagen, exhibited thirty-five of Skov’s paintings and
about two dozen drawings selected from among his most recent work.
Similarly to the 1950 exhibition, the objective was to provide a
comprehensive reference point for the art critics and collectors regarding
Skov’s continued Neo-cubist developments and the current status of his
work. About half of the paintings shown therefore were selected from among
the most recent vintage of 1955. However, in order to also illustrate with
examples from the specific developmental path he had taken during these
years, sixteen works from the prior years were included: nine from 1954,
six from 1953, and one painting from 1951. Selections of Skov’s work from
1950 - 1953, which in part had focused on drawings and ceramic decoration,
had already been exhibited earlier in Copenhagen in 1952, 1953 and 1955.
The exhibited
paintings were also selected for their individual strength and clarity,
and, so as to avoid to hanging a series of similarly conceived paintings
and developmental studies, the choices were also made with an eye to their
individuality of character, composition and color scheme. Although they all
shared the heritage of Cubism, the broad range of inventiveness and
variation among the individual exhibited paintings were, therefore, very
noticeable.
As a result, this
exhibition clearly evidenced a creative, serious artist working
independently within the framework of Cubism, even if not without the
occasional reference to the work of earlier Cubists. Let alone the
relatively recent origin of Cubism just a generation earlier, such
pictorial references, and particularly the broader based commonality of
stylistic elements, would in any event seem practically inevitable and as a
matter of course given the forcefulness of expression, and the uniqueness
of vision, offered to the art world by its invention. The three dozen exhibited paintings and two
dozen drawings demonstrated Skov’s careful, gradual aesthetic experiments
and the progressive development of his stepwise work during the six year
span since his 1950 exhibition. Taken together they also showed his consistent
spatial perception and an entirely uncompromising visual representation
totally coherent with the Cubist paradigm.
This exhibition, as
a matter of documented fact, marked the first
time that a Danish Neo-cubist painter - who was thoroughly conversant
with the paradigm of Cubist aesthetics and could use it with total
creative freedom based on more than ten years work dedicated to
understanding,
|