Richard Mortensen | Grothcollection

Richard Mortensen (1910-1993), was a Danish painter and graphic artist. He is one of the most significant Danish artists of the 1900s of an international format. He was married to the writer Sonja Hauberg 1945-1947 and father of the literary researcher Finn Hauberg Mortensen.

Already as a student at the Academy of Fine Arts 1931-1932 under Aksel Jørgensen, Mortensen carried out some independent model studies that showed an analytical structure of the human figure in strong simplification.

1933-1934 he formed with i.a. Vilhelm Bjerke Petersen and the Ejler Bille group Linien, which with several exhibitions and a journal (1934-1935) introduced and developed the abstract and surreal conception of art in Danish art. In the 1930s, Mortensen alternated between abstract compositions inspired by Wassily Kandinsky and more spontaneously-expressively executed works that, among other things, was based on the automatic drawing of surrealism.

In the occupation years 1940-1945, Richard Mortensen's idiom became increasingly expressive. A large number of images from the period revolve around the same figure theme, the mother and the child, often in almost dissolved structures.

In decorations for e.g. Igor Stravinsky's The Story of a Soldier and the Nightingale (performed respectively in 1944 in the Odd-Fellow Palace and in 1946 at the Royal Theatre) he worked with figurative forms, just as he created a large figurative ceiling painting for the Youth Farm in Husum (1944-1946).

For an exhibition in 1944, he executed a purely abstract painting with moving parts. During the war years, Mortensen was quite isolated in Danish art, but did participate in the editorial staff of the journal Årstiderne, exhibited with Corner and the Autumn Exhibition 1938-1942 and became a member of Grønningen. He also inspired younger artists such as Albert Mertz, Ib Geertsen and Richard Winther through personal contacts.

After the death of his wife Sonja Hauberg in 1947, Mortensen went through a personal and artistic crisis. Together with Robert Jacobsen, he settled in Paris in 1947 and found a more settled artistic form here, turned away from the spontaneous-abstract way of expression and developed a constructive-abstract art.

With connections to Galerie Denise René, in the following decade he created a number of tightly composed works, including the large series of images Normandy (1955, Louisiana). In these images, he pitted pure color surfaces against each other and worked with the two dimensions of the image plane, reducing its spatial-illusionistic possibilities to a minimum. This was also expressed in his publisher for tapestries and in graphic series of lithographs and serigraphs, e.g. Der fünfte Gesang (1958).

After 1960, there was a new break in Mortensen's art and life. From 1961 he exhibited with Den Frie Udstilling, he became a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen (1964-1980) and settled again in Denmark.

Several of his works bear titles that refer to favorite places of residence abroad, e.g. Ajaccio Marine (1969, Kunsthalle, Kiel), or to political and historical events such as the Massacre at My Lai (1971, Nordsøcentret, Hirtshals).

From 1980, Mortensen worked concentratedly and withdrawn in his studio in Ejby east of Holbæk, where, inspired by Zen Buddhism, he executed numerous ink drawings and graphic magazines and created large picture series such as Koen's history (1973-1984, Kunstmuseet Trapholt).

Richard Mortensen exhibited only a few of these works, which in 1984 were handed over to a foundation which in 1997 went to the Statens Museum for Art and the Kobberstiksamlingen. He carried out several decoration tasks, most recently for the Eastern High Court in Copenhagen (1983-84), and he received, among other things,. Eckersberg's and Thorvaldsen's Medal (1950 and 1968).