|
In his treatment
of the colors, Skov’s palette reflects faithfully the dryness and relative
brightness of the local landscape which the Northern European instinctually
feels so strongly in Southern
France, even during the
winter months. Even paintings made under overcast skies have the
characteristic brightness and dryness of color which his paintings from Denmark seldom if
ever match.
These paintings
demonstrates Skov's great facility for bringing the landscape to life even
while emphasizing its larger compositional structure on the canvas.
Although these paintings from Haute-de-Cagnes appear uncomplicated and
indeed are easily accessible for the viewer, they somewhat surprisingly
evidently already meet several sophisticated criteria of artistic
consciousness: Firstly, Skov's canvasses achieved to convincingly represent
large vistas of landscapes practically without the use of perspective. And
secondly, he developed the motif primarily in the vertical plane merely
suggesting the horizontal planes to be perceived by the viewer based on a
barest minimum of visual inducement.
Apparently, already
at this time, Skov was dealing with the pictorial-spatial analysis so
central to the Cezannian aesthetics. The lightly textured brush stroke and
also the tendency towards a planar geometry in the compositions, lead the
eye, with the aid of hindsight, perhaps, to recognize the first signs of
the aesthetics of proto-cubism; in Skov's case undoubtedly more sensed than
reasoned at this early point in his development.
Skov had very
shortly, during his first few months in Haute-de-Cagnes rediscovered his
earlier manner of painting and refined his expression based on his more
mature sensibility. And he had found an expression that he was comfortable
with and enjoyed working with.
Regardless of these considerations, or precisely because of the
resulting aesthetic quality expressed in his paintings, Skov’s friends and
family, and later the art critics, enthusiastically encouraged him to
proceed along this path of painting.
FYN PERIOD
1934 - 1935
In May of 1934,
Skov sent his paintings to Strib in Denmark for safekeeping with his parents and then left
Haute-De-Cagnes, travelling through Aspremont and Nice to Split in Dalmatia. They
intended to stay there, however, Isabella was unprepared for the warm
Adriatic summer sun and experienced a heat stroke. They, therefore, decided
to travel north to Vienna,
where they remained for several weeks to visit art galleries and museums
and then returned to Strib.
|