Carl-Henning Pedersen : Flying colours

Thursday 3rd March, Lorenzelli Arte will open the solo exhibition of the Danish artist Carl-Henning Pedersen: an original artistic proposal that represents a rare occasion, especially in Italy, to admire the works of this artist, who passed away in 2007 at the age of ninety-four. Pedersen was an important member of the CoBrA group together with Jorn, Alechinsky, Appel, Corneille and Constant. 

The exhibition, that takes place exactly thirty years after of the first solo exhibition of Pedersen in the gallery in Via Sant'Andrea, shows a selection of around 50 works of various dimensions: oils on canvas and watercolours made between the end of the Seventies and the first part of the Eighties. 

“What inspires me to paint – and to paint in the way I do? A painter prefers to let the paintings themselves be the answer, because it is limited what we are able to reveal about our unconscious state of mind. One thing I do know, however, to sit here in the Italian landscape, south of Siena – Campriano, surrounded by the magnificent Tuscan hills, gives me an inspiration which grows even more intensely by the knowledge that here, years back in time, lived the Etruscan people. Their art and sense for life and death touches my own feelings about art and life.” 

As a self-taught artist, Pedersen has always shown interest for medieval painting and sculptures of the Nordic tradition, played a large role in the development of the CoBrA group, and within this group it was Carl-Henning Pedersen who understood the importance of the connection between the present and the past, developing a pictorial language that acquired an original character in a very rapid manner. 

The figuration, that by some members of the group is abstract and deriving from dreams or the imaginary, is specified in identifiable shapes by Pedersen: the bird and the horse, man and woman, the sun and the moon, all elements that communicate between one and another the extreme reality but above all archetypal sign and symbols taken from the history of art. 
Referring to the medieval wall paintings in the Danish churches, in an article in the magazine “Helhesten”, Carl-Henning Pedersen explains not only to find a similar iconography to his in these paintings but also a gift of epic representation and the capacity of marvellous poetry that he felt was inside him. 

Pedersen has always been a prolific artist that from the beginning of his career has succeeded to generate a great marvel with his weaves of mythic cosmic figures and dreamlike creatures that have been present in his paintings and mosaic; his symbolism has always remained unsolved, an “imaginary” fairy tale of great visual and emotional impact. 

The works in this show testify his tendency towards fairy tales which is reinforced by the use of colours that always seem brighter: “I became a painter when I discovered the joy of putting down one colour next to another. Since then I have been seeking the secret of colour… I want to catch the golden light of the sun and fix it on to the canvas” he wrote in his essay of 1950 that will be published in the catalogue of the show. 

Certainly, after his CoBrA experience, the years that followed constructed a happy and fertile period for Pedersen: besides his painting, his artistic creation embraces sculptures, poetry, ceramic decorations and mosaics. His works are present in major museums and collections in the world. 
In 1976, during the inauguration of the “Carl-Henning Pedersen - Else Alfelt Museum”, in Herning, Denmark, he donated a major part his work and also the works of his first wife, the painter Else Alfelt. 

In occasion of the show the gallery will publish a catalogue, number 134, that includes colour pictures of all the shown works, an interview that Bruno Lorenzelli had with Carl-Henning Pedersen in 1980, a text written by the artist himself and a text by Claudio Cerritelli.