Odd «Sønni» Nerdrum, born April 8, 1944 (Helsingborg, Sweden), is the most prominent classical painter in Scandinavia of recent times.
His works have been acquired by museums in America, Europe and Asia. His paintings, rooted in the Ancient Greek understanding of human proportions, are often post-apocalyptic in nature and build on themes of refuge and forbidden longings. His primary influences from the pictorial tradition of Europe are Rembrandt, Caravaggio and Titian.
In the course of more than six decades, Nerdrum has crafted monumental works, many of which have become icons. He is also noted for his extensive production as a printmaker and draughtsman. As a vocal critic of modern times, he has argued for a more circular understanding of the world through his essays, aphorisms, poems and plays.
Early years
From an early age, Nerdrum excelled in drawing, painting, singing and music. His teacher Jens Bjørneboe at the Steiner School in Oslo wrote in a testimony from 1953: "Odd's drawings are quite unique, both in terms of their execution, their energy - and in terms of their very deep independence and originality." Late night conversations about culture and history with his step-grandfather, Supreme Court lawyer and member of parliament, also named Odd Nerdrum, were of great influence.
The canonical thinking of the bourgeoisie encouraged Nerdrum from early on to understand and master the techniques that were considered the best of their era. Already at the age of eight he declared that he would become "the new Edvard Munch" and in his mid-teens he painted portraits that were directly inspired by Munch's early, classical phase.
Student Years
Nerdrum studied under Aage Storstein, Alexander Schultz and Reidar Aulie at Oslo National Academy of the Arts in 1961–1963, and later with Joseph Beuys at the Academy of Fine Arts in Düsseldorf. These institutions primarily had an alienating effect on him.
At the age of 18, he was introduced to Lars Hertervig after an exhibition of the landscape painter’s work at the Artist’s House in Oslo. The exhibition formed the basis for a neoclassical movement in Norway which included Franz Widerberg and Karl-Erik Harr, among others.
In the autumn of 1962, the Oslo National Academy of Fine Arts went for a study trip to Stockholm. Although Nerdrum was at the time making woodcuts inspired by the expressionist Georges Roualt, he left his fellow students at the Museum of Modern Art to witness the classical collection at the National Museum. There he stood petrified in front of the painting The Conspiracy of Claudius Civilis by Rembrandt. Claudius Civilis’ edsavleggelse av Rembrandt.
It was like looking into a dark world. Pop-art was in fashion at the time. But after my encounter with Rembrandt, I realized that I was left with no other choice. It was impossible to obey the times when this was so overwhelming. I thought that I would never be able to make something that great, but I would rather fail than avoid the risk. This was the way!
Interviewed by Jan-Erik Ebbestad Hansen, Fenomenet Nerdrum (1996)
In post-war Norway, there was no living tradition or formal education in classical painting. Professor Storstein at the academy, who himself painted in the Cubist style, could not understand why Nerdrum had to resort to Rembrandt to learn how to paint. “Buy abstract,” was the general message from renowned gallerists, who distanced themselves from Nerdrum’s old-masterly idiom.
As a broke student, Nerdrum supported himself by taking portrait commissions. For a while he lived in a condemned apartment building in Oslo, where he conceived several etchings and paintings of floating figures in space. The initial version of Love Divided (1964–2005) dates from this time, but had to be destroyed as he was unable to preserve the picture in the limited conditions of his living situation.
When Nerdrum first participated in the Autumn Exhibition of 1967 with the painting Icarus, ble hans arbeider og person betraktet med mer enn alminnelig oppmerksomhet. Samme år avholdt han sin første separatutstilling i Kunstnerforbundets store sal og oppnådde den største publikumstilstrømning for en samtidsmaler på mange år. «Fenomenet Nerdrum» ble gjenstand for utstrakt debatt. Av kritikere ble han beskyldt for å lave pasticher, dårlige anatomikunnskaper og for ulydighet overfor tiden.
During this time, he was introduced to the sculptor Joseph Grimeland, who would become a close friend and mentor to his younger colleague. They toured Europe together, with Rome as their main destination. It was in the “Eternal City” that Nerdrum got introduced to Caravaggio's dark altarpieces, which became a revelation for him on a par with Rembrandt in Stockholm. Immersed in the works by the supreme master of chiaroscurolighting, Nerdrum boarded the first flight home to begin a series of new paintings.
The Period of Social-Realism
Man's encounter with the brutal modern world is a recurring theme in the late 1960s, exemplified in paintings such as Stefanus and Amputation. Much like Grimeland's Monument to Norwegian Ships and Sailors (1980), Nerdrum's mission was to bring the classical form into the present.
When I use this form, it is not because I am addressing myths, stories or legends of ancient times, but it is because this form has the strongest dramatic effect on a modern audience.
Interviewed on a television program on Norway’s state television broadcast, 1978.
Nerdrum took great interest in the vulnerability of the individual and minorities in the face of power structures. Anarchism appealed to him and he studied the Russian philosophers Bakunin and Kropotkin – defining himself far to the left of other radicals. From his social-realistic period we find works such as Social Welfare and The Arrest. He also depicted the new youth culture in pictures such as Liberation and Spring.
A more considerable provocation appeared a couple of years later with Twilight (1981), showing a woman relieving herself in a forest clearing. The painting was rejected by the Autumn Exhibition, but the jury claimed that this was only due to the picture's lack of technical execution. Shocking and inedible, said a reviewer in Aftenposten, to which Nerdrum replied that he "would not hide any part of reality". Joseph Beuys, who had previously been Nerdrum's teacher, called Twilight "possibly the most radical" painting he had encountered.
Nerdrum learned about composition from Titian and Caravaggio. He used this knowledge to stage a series of dramatic motifs that peaked with The Murder of Andreas Baader (1978), in which the left-wing German terrorist is portrayed as a victim of the authorities.
After having completed the grand composition Refugees at Sea, he began a motif of Palestinian prisoners, but left the picture unfinished. Nerdrum concluded that his view of man had been problematic for a long time – that the idea of making every individual into a saint was naive. At the same time, the German draughtsman Käthe Kollwitz appeared to him in a dream, urging him to leave the present time behind.
The Post-Apocalyptic Period
When Nerdrum reworked The Fall (1983) from being a social realist scene set in New York to a dreamscape with naked figures, he had changed his perception of the world. Reading Rousseau's Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, about how civilization corrupted man made him abandon the idea that the present should be elevated through the classical form. Instead he cast man into a wasteland inspired by Persian and Icelandic landscapes. He later described the new direction in his work as "man's awakening dialogue with nature", referring to the painting The Black Cloud.
Armed with guns, Nerdrum's steppe people live in pact with the elements. All that surrounds them is nameless and must be defined anew. Leather and fur-clothed, archaic human figures in desolate landscapes gradually proves to be the distinctive hallmark of his life work. The painting Hope by George Frederic Watts was crucial in defining Nerdrum's view of humanity. His 1980s production is allegorical, yet rooted in reality – exemplified in his painting The Night Guard , where Hope has been transformed into an earthly scene.
Compositionally, Nerdrum adopted the inverted perspective with centralized figures inspired by 14th-century Russian icons. This form of minimalism is expressed in paintings such as Sleeping Twins and The Singers. Perspective distortions akin to those of the Russian icons are evident in The Seed Protectors, where the horizon is curved and seen from a bird's eye view, while the figures are seen from below.
Success Abroad and Provocation at Home
Postmodernism's critique of power structures paved the way for more tolerance towards the classical form. In 1983, an American by the name of Robert Feldman was struck by one of Nerdrum’s portraits at the National Museum in Oslo and established contact with the painter. Through Feldman, Nerdrum was signed by an American agent and later achieved success through the Martina Hamilton Gallery in New York. During the 1980s and 1990s, he gave lectures at American academies and was purchased by numerous institutions and museums. The criticism he had faced in his home country since his debut was thereby reduced to a provincial phenomenon and Norwegians finally opened their eyes to Nedrum's imagery.
While his paintings toured the United States in traveling exhibitions, Nerdrum was nominated for a new professorship in classical painting in Norway. However, the candidacy led to such violent reactions among teachers, students and colleagues that he was forced to withdraw two years later from what has since become known as the "Academy dispute" (1994-96).
In his search to find the origin of what he perceived as an all-encompassing “black hand” that dictated culture, Nerdrum sought answers from the history of ideas. He eventually concluded that German idealism, with G. W. F. Hegel and Immanuel Kant as its front figures, dominated the mindset of the modern era. In the essay collection Kitsch and Art by Herman Broch, he recognized the same mistreatment he had received from the establishment. Descriptions of “kitsch” as backward-looking, imitative, sentimental, and theatrical are common among the authors who coined the loaded term, which has often been used to target late Romantics.
After being at the height of his success and having been featured on the cover of Artnews magazine in America, Nerdrum wrote an opening speech for his retrospective exhibition at the Astrup Fearnley Museum in 1998. In front of a packed audience, he asked forgiveness for having sailed under a false flag and declared himself a “kitsch painter.” The announcement was reported in all national newspapers. Critics refused to accept that he defined himself outside of art and dismissed it as a coquettish desire to remain an outsider. The media’s excitement about Nerdrum embracing the word “kitsch” joined a series of headlines about the painter, who was constantly in the spotlight with scandalous statements and paintings such as Pissing Woman and Self-Portrait in Golden Robe.
How is this going to end? The only thing that comes out of these scandals is a kind of negativity and a desire to persecute a human being.
Interviewed by Espen Thoresen on XLTV, 1998.
The Tax Case
In 2001, the Norwegian Tax Administration inspected Nerdrum's exhibition at Haugar Museum in Tønsberg. They suspected that replicas of well-known paintings from the 1980s were being sold under the table and questioned the director Jan Åke Pettersson. The following year, Lena Lindgren published an insinuating series of articles in Dagens Næringsliv about the painter's finances, creating fables about paintings sold "in the East and West". The journalist's undocumented claims were used by the tax authorities as a pretext to initiate an audit. Nerdrum was ultimately demanded to account for all sales from the period, as well as finished works and works in progress. Shortly afterwards, Nerdrum announced that he would no longer speak to the Norwegian press, and in the autumn of that year he emigrated with his family to Iceland.
The trial against Nerdrum lasted fifteen years, ended with a conviction and later with a pardon by royal decree (September 2017). The tax case in its entirety was refuted as a miscarriage of justice by art sociologist Dag Solhjell in the book Staten mot kunstneren (2013).
Among Norwegian painters who have faced mistreatment from the authorities, Nerdrum’s story echoes the story of Edvard Munch, who in the last twenty years of his life fought a bitter dispute with the Norwegian tax authorities.
The Self-Portraits
The trial led to a nomadic migration for the Nerdrum family, who would go on to live in Reykjavik, Paris, Berlin, Stockholm and most recently in the painter's place of birth, Helsingborg. Throughout these years, Nerdrum made several self-portraits that bear witness to the trauma of the prosecution. Self-Portrait as a Criminal (2011) was exhibited at Edsvik Konsthall outside Stockholm in the exhibition "Tax and Abused Animals" shortly after the verdict from the district court was made public. He later painted Sysiphus, Self-Portrait as a Dog and Self-Portrait with Plate. At the same time, Nerdrum's sons Bork and Öde made the documentary film The Self-Portrait about their father's life long service in front of the mirror.
Like Rembrandt, Nerdrum has painted his own life in all its phases, which he describes as “digging into his own face.” His self-study is part of a long history in Europe by many prominent painters, but with greater drama and variety in role-playing than his predecessors in the classical tradition.
Role-playing and personal experiences are particularly intertwined in The Last Procedure (2015). It depicts Nerdrum being sentenced by three women – sitting in his own primeval landscape. The painting later ended up at the Yu-Hsiu Museum of Modern Art in Taiwan.
The Void Period and Life in Iceland
When Nerdrum emigrated from Norway, he had been painting volcanic landscapes for almost twenty years. His main production during his stay in Iceland, however, would revolve around floating people in space – an idea he had explored in his youth. As a child he painted white, resurrecting figures on a black background based on impressions from fever dreams. These visions were now applied to big canvases. Once again it was Hope by Watts that played a central part, as seen in Love Divided and Volunteer in Void , where people float around small planets in an infinite void. Here, the individual finds himself in a state where the ordinary social order has ceased to exist. In this way, Wedding in void and Arrest in Space become a theatre of the absurd where our linear perception is thrown out of play.
Settling in Iceland was more than an involuntary stay in exile. Nerdrum had already visited the northern island in 1985, and was deeply fascinated by the volcanic landscape. Hrafn Gunnlaugsson's films about the Sturlung era had made such an impression on him that he bought several of the props.
In Iceland, Nerdrum devoted time to writing plays that were later published in Norwegian, Swedish and English. The Last Days of Immanuel Kant was published in 2003 and was scheduled to be performed at the National Theatre in Oslo the same year. However, the performance was cancelled due to strong public criticism of Nerdrum's controversial portrayal of the German philosopher. Shortly afterwards, he released the play as an audio book with Jan Haarstad and Kristofer Hivju in the lead roles. Nerdrum’s daughter Aftur directed the play when The Last Days of Immanuel Kant made its Norwegian debut in 2021 at the Tore Bjørn Skjølsvik Gallery in Oslo with Per Christian Ellefsen in the lead role.
Many of Nerdrum's pieces are autobiographical and deal with how the individual is deceived by the collective, as in The Caryatid and The Diamond Man.
During this time, Nerdrum gave lectures in the United States, taught at the academies, and had regular solo exhibitions at the Forum Gallery in New York. Among American painters, he held Andrew Wyeth in the highest regard. In the same fashion as Nerdrum, Wyeth had been accused of not following the spirit of the times, and a curator at MoMA once mocked him as "the greatest living kitsch-meister." A meeting between the two took place at the Wyeth family's estate in Pennsylvania in 2005. Following the visit, Wyeth wrote in a letter to Nerdrum: "I consider you the greatest painter living and I am proud to have you as my friend."
The French Period
After his stay in Iceland, the journey continued to France. His students had a short distance to the old masters at the Musée d’Orsay and the Louvre Palace, living with his family in a mansion in Maisons Laffitte, just outside Paris. From Nerdrum’s Parisian era, a “French-lyrical” influence is observed, with the use of coarser textures and brighter colors. Examples of works from this period are Eggsnatchers, Self-Portrait in Arcadia, and Sleepwalker.
The short film Les Nuits D’été (2009) was also made in France and was a collaborative project involving the entire Nerdrum family. Odd Nerdrum was responsible for the plot: Twin sisters surrounded by harmony and happiness who are separated when one of them ends up in a fatal accident when encountering the modern world.
Before the family left France in 2013, they opened the house to the public for three days, with paintings adorning the walls in all the living rooms. Just months earlier, the family had met the French-Norwegian composer Martin Romberg, who wrote music for the opening day and the painting To the Lighthouse (2012). Romberg would later become the director of the Nerdrum Museum in Stavern.
The Late Nerdrum
In the 1990s, Nerdrum developed a renewed interest in the late works of the Italian Renaissance master Tiziano Vecellio. He revisited the “dissolved” technique from his younger years, applying coarser strokes and more hazy transitions, as can be seen in Self-Portrait with Hepatitis. The entire surface is luminescent and vibrating in the works from this period, as in White Hermaphrodite. Titian’s increasing tendency over his long career towards the underworldly and the timeless is also reflected in Nerdrum’s development.
In the 2000s, human emotional states are clearly intensified. The transitions between skin and background melt into each other, as in Five Singing Women, where the faces have become ghostly impersonal due to the hazy effect. In the spirit of the opera composer Puccini, Nerdrum conjures up heartbreaking climaxes in works such as Memorosa, The Golden Cape and Daddy’s Girl.
The motifs take on an even rougher, more vibrant exterior in the following decade – staged in a world where the surroundings ravage its inhabitants. The particular way of rendering of arms and legs carries the effect of painted movement – even breathing is depicted in the form of vapor escaping from the mouth to bring the figures to life. Groups of figures are depicted as one organism, as seen in the autobiographical work Crossing the Border.
One of the works that particularly occupies Nerdrum is Titian's The Flaying of Marsyas, which he once called "the best painting in the world." During his stay in France, he traveled to Kroměříž in the Czech Republic, accompanied by writer Torgrim Eggen, to be face-to-face with the painting:
If you start looking for mistakes, you will never stop looking. This picture is hopeless, dirty and impossible – terrible in every way. But on the other hand, it has this sense of unity. I am completely speechless.
Interviewed by Torgrim Eggen about Titian’s The Flaying of Marsyas, Magasinet KUNST-magazine, no. 4, 2012
Stadig er det de antikke grekernes oppfatning av menneskekroppen som opptar Nerdrum. Tematikken i bildene har ofte fellestrekk med hellenismens interesse for nakenhet, tvekjønnethet og forbudte lengsler representert i datidens skulptur og vasemaleri. Dette trekket trer særlig frem i flere androgyne portretter og selvportretter han har lavet opp gjennom årene. Sent på 2000-tallet studerer Nerdrum Plinius den eldres beskrivelse av Apelles og går over til den greske malerens reduserte palett, bestående av sort, hvitt, rødt og gult.
It is also during this time that Nerdrum takes an interest in Aristotle’s philosophy. In the essay Overcoming the Germanification of Europe , he argues for establishing a faculty at the universities based on the aesthetic teachings of the Greek thinker. “He lived in a circular world, where time stood still, which it actually does,” Nerdrum writes, pointing out that the same mindset led Europe to awaken and realize the Renaissance.
In The Poetics , Aristotle lists four types of tragedy, the last of which deals with stories from the underworld. After describing a primitive rebirth in desolate landscapes and people in space, it is precisely in the underworld that Nerdrum's motifs have unfolded in recent years. From this series of paintings, figures appear without clothes and hair on their bodies, as seen in Astray, where pale old men and people in wheelchairs are wandering without aim or meaning.
Motifs from ritualistic, earthbound tribal societies are also prevalent in this period. The colors are toned down and the strokes coarser than before. Most recently, Nerdrum's own maternal relationship has been eerily rendered in Mother and Son and Angry Mother.
The Nerdrum School
As a teacher, Nerdrum has opened his home to painting students from all over the world, modeling his school after the Italian Renaissance workshops. Since 1974, over three hundred students have been affiliated with the Nerdrum School – mainly from America and Asia, where contemporary classical painting has a greater foothold than in Europe.
The first assignment his students are given is to paint a self-portrait from a live model. The didactics are based on the Greek method. Drawing competitions, philosophical morning meetings and critique nights are part of the routine at Memorosa in Stavern, which was converted into a rural estate in the 1990s.
The Norwegian painter Jan-Ove Tuv was a student of Nerdrum from 1996 to 2002 and has been closest to the teacher in communicating the craft and philosophy that has sprung from the school. Together they have published three books and held several panel discussions and joint exhibitions.
Tuv was central to the documentary series The Hunt of Odd Nerdrum (2018) , where he traveled with Öde Nerdrum to museums in numerous countries, tracing the teacher's sources of inspiration. In recent years, Tuv has been the host of the long form conversation and podcast Cave of Apelles, which has given international reach to the thoughts and values of the Nerdrum School.
The Nerdrum Museum and Opening of the Prisons
In 2024, the Nerdrum Museum opened in Sjøparken in Stavern, Norway in an old industrial building which previously served as a match factory. The process was closely followed by a film team that launched the documentary series Familien Nerdrum on the Norwegian National Broadcasting Channel that same year. Over six episodes, the audience become acquainted with Odd Nerdrum, his wife Turid Spildo and their four children at the Memorosa estate in Stavern. The series was a nation-wide success and has been sold to all Nordic countries.
Nerdrum Museum had 17,000 visitors in its first season and is set to complete the expansion of the museum with a second floor in the near future. The main hall, which is currently under construction, is intended for the monumental work Opening of the Prisons. The six-meter-long canvas (almost 20 feet) was started in 2012 and is based on a charcoal drawing from the 1970s.
The Life Work
Overall, Odd Nerdrum's life work – consisting of prints, drawings and over three hundred oil paintings – can be said to be among the most remarkable in Scandinavian history. Nerdrum has breathed fresh life into a four-hundred-year-old tradition. But unlike his role models from the Renaissance and Baroque, he is neither bound to biblical stories nor the Greco-Roman myths. With his dramatic human depictions, he has explored a primeval landscape, or rather the "myth behind the myth," with the overall aim of capturing man in a dreamlike state – stripped and naked before eternity.
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Authored by Bork Nerdrum, Jan-Ove Tuv & Martin Romberg
Kilder og referanser
- Hansen, Jan-Erik Ebbestad. Fenomenet Nerdrum. Aschehoug, 1996.
- Pettersson, Jan Åke. Historieforteller og selvavslører. Interview in Dagens Næringsliv, 1998.
- NRK Fjernsynsgalleriet. Interview with Odd Nerdrum, aired 3. March 1987.
- Lindgren, Lena. Series of articles in Dagens Næringsliv, 2002.
- Solhjell, Dag. Staten mot kunstneren: Rettsprosessen mot Odd Nerdrum. Frekk Publishing, 2013.
- Eggen, Torgrim. Interview with Nerdrum about The Flaying of Marsyas, KUNST-magazine, no. 4, 2012.
- Nerdrum, Odd. Immanuel Kants siste dager. Gyldendal, 2003.
- Wyeth, Andrew. Personal letter to Odd Nerdrum, 2005.
- Nerdrum, Odd; Tuv, Jan-Ove, et. al. Kitsch – More than Art. Schibsted Publishing House, 2010.
- Familien Nerdrum, NRK documentary series, 2024.
- The Self-Portrait, documentary by Bork & Öde Nerdrum, 2015.
- Cave of Apelles (YouTube-channel), interviews and conversations conducted by Jan-Ove Tuv, 2018–2024.
- The Hunt of Odd Nerdrum, documentary series, 2018.
- Øystein Parmann: En ung gammelmester (Morgenbladet, 22.11.67)
- Hans-Jakob Brun: Fenomenet Nerdrum (Dagbladet 30.11.67)