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for more than a generation. Notwithstanding that he had been able to
ignore it successfully during the previous many years of concentrated
personal development.
Skov’s personal
thoughts and concerns regarding the appreciation by others and recognition
of his art, was never expressed verbally or in any other way - not even
within the family circle, which in itself provides a remarkable insight
into the man, and which is confirmed by several of his closest friends and
family. It would, however, be improbable if he had not had such concerns in
some form, even if deeply submerged and controlled or sublimated in the
combination of pleasure and agony resulting from his work; and either way,
for anyone to continue exercising an intellectual or artistic creativity,
there probably will always be a need for personal encouragement, in some
form or other of positive criticism and recognition of either the effort or
the final results. And for more than a decade Skov had received neither.
A
part of the explanation for this situation must be laid to the inertness of
Skov's outside communications with the art critics, galleries, dealers and
collectors, and the public at large. At some time during the early sixties,
he had released his earlier relationship with several art galleries; and he
had not participated in any of the collective exhibitions by the official
art associations. People he had known as a young painter, and that had
taken an active interest in his art and progress, had retired or passed
away; and he had never tried to and therefore not developed any special
relationships with influential art critics or museum directors. Another
thing, during the nineteen-fifties and also later, he was finding himself
too often in direct opposition to the then very popular non-figurative
abstract painters and their art form, since he did not accept it as the
solution to what he considered the larger, more essential artistic
challenge. And, therefore, although he knew personally most of the active
Danish artists, yet had made lasting friendships with only very few, he had
during these years to a large extent isolated himself from most of them.
His closer artist-friends included Rita Kern-Larsen, the noted Danish
Surrealist painter, Jean De Garvadi, the French Neo-cubist painter who he
had befriended in the early fifties, and the sculptor Anker Noerregaard who
he had known since his years of studies in Munich. But with the exception of what was just a
handful of individuals, there was little appreciation of Skov’s Neo-cubist
endeavors among contemporary Danish artists and art critics during the
nineteen-sixties.
Within Skov’s
closest family, however, his wife and three sons,
there was complete solidarity and respect for his work; but his
extended
family was not very close. As
a young man, he had always felt emotionally closest to his younger brother,
August, who became a captain in the
merchant marine, but only very seldom visited in Copenhagen. His older
brother, Julius, had emigrated to USA already before the first world war,
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