Light is form and colour; light is the source of life and energy; light is inspiration. That is how you could summarize the artwork of the Danish painter and member of the CoBrA Group, Carl-Henning Pedersen (1913-2007). Pedersenhas found his own unique way of turning the vibrating energy of sunlight and the wide range of colours – his most essential sources of inspiration – into the central essence of his art. While Carl-Henning Pedersen began to write poetry early on in his life, it was not until he met the painter Else Alfelt, to whom he was married until she passed away in 1974, that he discovered his passion for painting, mastering it as an autodidact. It did not take him long to develop his unique sense of form and colour, of the poetry in pictures. Though you can find traces of the pulsating painting style of artists such as Kandinsky, Klee or Chagall in Pedersen’s pictures, his world of motifs greatly differs from theirs. The mystic creatures that leap out of the background of his pictures just to be swallowed up by the ground, have their roots in Nordic mythology and conjure their own unique dream world filled with visions.
1913: Born in Copenhagen, Denmark.
1933: Meets the painter Else Alfelt at the International Folk High School in Elsinore and marries her in 1934. Inspired by her he starts to paint remaining completely self-taught throughout his life. Gets in contact with the Danish avant-garde.
1936: Joins the Artists’ Autumn Exhibition in Copenhagen with four abstract paintings.
1939: First trips to France and Germany where he gets involved with modern art;visits the exhibition Entartete Kunst.
1941-45: Writer and co-editor of the art review Helhesten together with Else Alfelt, Ejler Bille, Henry Heerup, Egill Jacobsen, Robert Jacobsen and Asger Jorn.
1942-49:Member of the artist group Høst, together with Karel Appel, Corneille and Asger Jorn.
1948-51: Member of the CoBrA group; participates at the first exhibition of the group at the Stedeijk Museum Amsterdam and at the last one at the Palais des Beaux-Art in Liège, Belgium; participates at the Venice Biennale.
1958: Receives the international Guggenheim award for Denmark; builds an atelier in Bovbjerg, Denmark.
1962: Participation at the Venice Biennale and at Sao Paolo Biennale; receives UNESCO Prize.
1964:Completes the mosaic wall The Cosmic Ocean for the H. C. Ørsted Institute of the Copenhagen University.
1966-68: Creates a 5 x 200 m long ceramic mural for the Angli factory, today part of the Herning Art Museum.
1970: Stage design for the opera Wozzeck by Alban Berg; represents Denmark at the Expo in Osaka, Japan.
1974: Death of his wife Else Alfelt.
1975: Follows the invitation to the artist colony Michkenot Sha’ananim, Jerusalem, where he meets his second wife, the photographer Sidsel Ramson; the couple settles in Barbizon near Paris.
1975-76: Creates a ceramic mural consisting of 1000 tiles for the Carl-Henning Pedersen and Else Alfelt Museum in Herning, Denmark, to which he donates the major part of his and Else Alfelt’s work; the museum is inaugurated in 1976.
1977: Moves to Burgundy.
1980: Receives the Prince Eugen Medal.
1983: Unveiling of the painted glass window The Light of Liberty for the Museum of the Danish Resistance, Copenhagen; starts the decoration of the Ribe cathedral, Denmark.
1998: Commission to paint four large size paintings for the Hall of Mirrors at the Prime Minister’s Department, Christiansborg, Copenhagen.
2007: Dies in Frederiksberg, Denmark.
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