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THE FOURTH DECADE
1960 - 1970
As Skov entered
into his fourth decade as a painter, he also began a new phase of his
Neo-cubist oeuvre. Compared with the previous fifteen years, his paintings
now developed at a more leisurely pace. Altogether his paintings number
only approximately two dozen during the decade of the nineteen-sixties. No
single explanation can be given for this change in artistic productivity;
but perhaps it is not difficult to trace and understand at least some of
the more obvious potential causes for this decline. Actually it is most
probable that it was due to a combination of causes, including his frequent
extended travels abroad, and, not unlikely, the apparent lack of acclaim
for his work during the previous ten years. But it undoubtedly also
reflects the fact that he now had achieved the clarity of artistic
expression he had fought so much for during the nineteen-fifties, and that
he, therefore, felt less challenged and less urgency.
Although Skov
during the nineteen-sixties still continued to explore new color
combinations, compositions and aesthetic effects, it seems obvious from a
review of his paintings from these years, that he was now more engaged in
the cultivation of a well known field of aesthetics and expression, than he
was having to conquer the challenge of discovering an unknown artistic
continent, as evidently had previously been the case. During the
nineteen-fifties, he had explored and consolidated his Neo-cubist aesthetic
vision; and now, during the decades of the sixties and seventies, he could
enjoy the freedom of the medium more deliberately, without any compulsion
to have to also research it, or expand on it, at the same time. In part
this may explain why he in fact produced fewer paintings than he had done
during any given year previously, except of course during the world war
when outside forces restricted him, and also why he made notably fewer
series of paintings exploring particular aesthetic paths.
But this also
provides some further insight into why there appears to be a certain
distinct, discernable sense of freedom and tranquility in Skov’s paintings
from the nineteen-sixties. It is true that his artistic pursuit remained
dedicated to Neo-cubism also during the following decades, but his
underlying approach to painting had somehow changed. And for these reasons, it therefore seems
useful to consider his paintings from 1960 onwards as representing a
separate phase of his work.
As Skov entered
into the nineteen-sixties, after working seriously
for more than twenty years with figurative-abstract Cubism, it would
seem unlikely were he not at least to some extent responding to the
cubist-fobic
local artistic ambience still holding sway in Copenhagen, as it already had
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