The most important figurative Norwegian painter since Edvard Munch, Frans Widerberg, is exhibiting prints which showcase his inventive use of the medium through a variety of techniques including lithography, woodcut, screenprinting and etching.
Widerberg (born Oslo 1934) is one of those artistic visionaries who creates an alternative world in which events take place in an empty landscape, akin to Lear’s “blasted heath” or Beckett’s existential void. Populated by an extraordinary cast of characters, his paintings include men, women, sometimes Adam and Eve-like in their vulnerability, sometimes violently confronting each other. They are accompanied by winged dogs, bears, snakes – a strange menagerie which has materialised from dreams – or nightmares.
In this alternative world the laws of gravity do not apply; figures hover, levitate or swoop and dive. The action is often extreme. Certain themes continue to preoccupy him; elongated, suspended figures, loving couples; the elements, earth, fire, water and air, which evoke symbolic associations with the human condition rather than any literal references. A horse and rider, another recurrent motif, instantly summoning Goethe’s ‘Erl King’ to us, while reminding us that Widerberg is the inheritor of Norse legends, as well as the heightened emotionalism of Edvard Munch.
Colour, too, is often reduced to saturated, blazing primaries. Using a limited palette of red, blue and yellow, Widerberg (born Oslo 1934) conjures a light which sometimes evokes the aurora borealis and at others a nuclear incandescence. “Yellows, red, blue, matter, energy, space …. Together they resound, vibrate, to bring about transformations and life”.
Whatever the medium, technical development and experimentation are never pursued for their own sake, but are allied to a quest for vision. “I do not think, I paint,” Widerberg states, emphasising that his imagery is not planned or preconceived, but evolves through the spontaneity of the act of painting itself. “I don’t research my motifs; it’s more that when I’m lucky they find me.”
A prolific artist in all the media he has chosen to explore, Widerberg has always been productive in the medium of printmaking. In this exhibition the richness of Widerberg’s imagery is complemented by his inventive use of the medium through a variety of techniques including, lithography, woodcut, screenprinting and etching to present each image to maximum effect.
Frans Widerberg, After Eden - Prints
10 November – 22 December 2006
University Gallery and Baring Wing, Northumbria University
Sandyford Road, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 8ST
Monday to Thursday 10am to 5pm, Friday and Saturday 10am to 4pm
Closed Sundays and Bank Holidays. Admission free
T: 0191 227 4424
Peer Gynt, lithograph, 2006, 80.5x60cm, 54/60