Thorvald Hellesen

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Thorvald Hellesen (1888–1937) was a Norwegian avant-garde artist who lived and worked in Paris in the 1910s and 1920s. He and his wife, the French artist Hélène Perdriat, were part of a circle of artists that included Pablo Picasso, Fernand Léger, Constantin Brâncuși, Piet Mondrian, Theo van Doesburg and many others. In his short yet intense life, Thorvald Hellesen created an impressive unique oeuvre, oriented on Modernism, consisting of oil paintings, watercolors, gouaches, drawings, design projects and textiles. Nevertheless, even in Norway he is only known to a few.

With this publication the authors Dag Blakkisrud, Matthew Drutt and Hilde Mørch have ­created a written portrait of Hellesen. In addition to classifying him within the history of art, they try to find explanations as to why his artistic practice is only now being considered important and interesting for Norwegian and international art history.

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Thorvald Hellesen 1888–1937 arnoldsche

978-3 -89790 -593 -1

Thorvald Hellesen 1888–1937

With contributions by Dag Blakkisrud, Matthew Drutt and Hilde Mørch

Edited by Dag Blakkisrud and Matthew Drutt

arnoldsche

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Contents Dag Blakkisrud / Matthew Drutt

Preface 6 Dag Blakkisrud

Thorvald Hellesen: A Search for Clues 9 Hilde Mørch

Thorvald Hellesen and L’effort Moderne. Artistic Practice and Life 73 Matthew Drutt

Hellesen Reconsidered – Towards a New Understanding of Sources, Subjects and Artistic Development 151 Dag Blakkisrud

Thorvald Hellesen and the Maritime Building in Oslo 219 Dag Blakkisrud

Thorvald Hellesen and Villa Eckbo 227

Thorvald Hellesen – Chronology 233

Greetings from the Board of Eckbos Legat 240

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Thorvald Hellesen, self-portrait and portrait of Eivind Eckbo, ca 1930s, graphite and pencil on paper, 45 × 30 cm.

Collection Margaret Eckbo

FIGS. 1A–B

The mirror and the puzzle It has been said that if you break a mirror, you can expect seven years of bad luck. But what if the mirror was already broken long ago, and the shards were swept into a corner in history’s dark attic, intended to be forgotten? What if you found the shards and picked them up, one by one, cleaned them and held them up to the light? What would you see? Maybe glimpses and fragments of forgotten lives, surroundings and milieus − a memory here, an anecdote there. Some official documents, maybe some letters. Some truths and some lies. And if you tried putting the pieces of the broken mirror together, they would still never create a precise picture because some of the pieces are lost forever. Some were destroyed by time or someone’s need to hide something; others might be emphasised and made visible through someone’s desire to shine in the light of posterity’s admiration. Maybe the picture you see looks like a painting by Thorvald Hellesen, with forms of technology and the human body merging and the demand for meaning and specific references to the wider world terminating. Maybe you and the picture also merge into a new unity, like a story with times and places interweaving and the boundaries between then and now disappearing [Figs. 1a−b].

Writing this article has been a fascinating and dreamlike foray into hidden and forgotten lives, colourful and intense personalities that formed their existence in ways that did not accord with ordinary standards. It has been an encounter with life’s drama, happenstance and the intense tragedy of destinies. Along the way, there have been sudden falls into the rivers of the unexpected.

Such falls can happen on a completely ordinary morning, or in the middle of the night, when you suddenly wake up and know you have found something that will change the whole story, something that wasn’t there before. The piece of puzzle that was lost. Like the day I stood in the library

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of Thorvald Hellesen’s sister with her diary in my hands and gained insight into the unexpected and poignant destinies of certain family members. Or the day I suddenly understood something of the origins of Eivind Eckbo’s wealth; I then had to travel to England to see Aldermaston Court, where Alice Mary Eckbo spent her childhood in the late 1800s. There were several such ‘falls’ or accidental discoveries, and sometimes I have had to build some imaginary bridges to make the story hang together. This is not least because the story could have begun almost anywhere, in Paris, in London or in old Kristiania (now Oslo), where Hellesen was born in 1888.1 It could also have started with Hellesen’s parents, how they met or when Hellesen received his first commission as a young artist.

But this story finds its beginning somewhere else: in one of the deep and narrow fjords in Western Norway, where white-painted palatial wooden hotels were built in the mid 1800s to house wealthy and adventurous (mostly British) tourists. These were people who followed the fashion of leaving crowded cities or their majestic but formality-ridden manor houses during the summer months in order to experience pristine nature and breathe fresh air. Their aim was to lead a simple and healthy life far from the tyranny of duties.

FIGS. 2A–B Photos from a family scrapbook of Eivind Eckbo’s, showing him as a boy and a young officer. Eckbo Foundation, Oslo

In the summer of 1906, something happened in one of these remote and beautiful fjords that would forever change the lives of many people and eventually lay the foundation for Thorvald Hellesen’s most outstanding works of art. It was in this fjord that the destiny of his lifelong supporter and patron, Eivind Eckbo, was decided. Eckbo went from being nobody to becoming somebody. Somebody with a capital S [Figs. 2a−b].

The tourists came to climb mountains, calculate the height of their ascents and describe the views.

Some came to hunt wild game, but first and foremost they came to fish for salmon. The untamed and furious rivers that the melting snow created in the short summer weeks allowed millions of big-bellied salmon to swim upstream to spawn. At the same time, the rivers attracted noble fish1 Norway’s capital was called Kristiania at the time of Hellesen’s birth in 1888. In 1925 it officially changed to Oslo, the old medieval name.

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8 Untitled (Female Nude), 1911.

Pencil on paper, 53 × 43.5 cm Private collection

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9 Portrait of a Woman, 1911.

Oil on canvas, 55 × 46 cm National Museum, Oslo

E A R LY Y E A RS

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Introduction In the spring of 2019, one picture stood out as especially interesting in the exhibition ‘Hverdagskunst som verdenskunst. Utvalg fra Guttorm Guttormsgaards arkiv’ (‘Everyday Art as WorldClass Art. A Selection from Guttorm Guttormsgaard’s Archive’)1 at Akershus Art Centre in Lillestrøm, Norway: an unsigned Cubist collage with clippings from a French newspaper. It had suffered from rough treatment and might have been used as backing material for a newer work of art. The composition, technique, colours and format all point to one Norwegian artist [Fig. 1]. This picture has an interesting provenance. It had been owned by the artist Henrik Sørensen, who told Guttormsgaard that it was painted by an artist who worked internationally, name unknown. Could it be an unsigned picture by Thorvald Hellesen? Maybe it was given to Sørensen by Hellesen himself. Both artists lived in Paris in the 1920s. Sørensen, however, had little respect for Cubism. Was this why he used the picture as a backing for one of his own works? Komposisjon (Composition) is covered with paint splatters, tape remnants and traces of a knife. This suggests that many sheets of paper were taped onto the panel and then eventually cut off. The heavy-handed treatment it has suffered can also be seen as a metaphor for how Thorvald Hellesen’s art was received in Norway during his lifetime.

Exhibitions and research The art historian Steinar Gjessing was the first in modern times to address Thorvald Hellesen’s artistic practice. This was in the publication Kunst og Kultur in 1981. Towards the end of his article, he quotes from Tidens Tegn,2 one of Oslo’s daily newspapers, which ran an article in connection with an exhibition of Hellesen’s works two years after his death: One usually notices local geniuses here in the country, and Bjørnson, Hamsun and Vigeland are brilliant examples of this. But those who fall outside the national framework and who operate in abstract internationalism’s thin air risk, more than anyone else, being overlooked in unknown Norway.3

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Presumably Thorvald Hellesen, Composition, ca 1915–16, acrylic and collage on plate, 77.5 × 58 cm ⁄ 94 × 75.5 cm.

Guttormsgaard’s Archive FIG. 1

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Guttorm Guttormsgaard (1938–2019) was a Norwegian visual artist (printer and drawer) and collector who established a gallery, a workshop and Guttormsgaard’s Archive (www. guttormsgaardsarkiv.no) at Blaker, near Oslo.

Much of the information in this present text is drawn from Steinar Gjessing, ‘Den norske kubist Thorvald Hellesen. En presentasjon’, in Kunst og kultur, vol. 64, ed. Steinar Gjessing, Sidsel Helliesen and Per Jonas Nordhagen (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1981), 233–248. My archival research has also brought new and previously unpublished information to light.

Tidens Tegn, 10 May 1939.

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16 Composition with Dancers, 1914–15 (1913–14?).

Oil on canvas, 260 × 340 cm Storebrand Group, Oslo

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CL ASSIC CU BIST ST Y LE

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22 Portrait of Eivind Eckbo, 1914.

Oil on canvas, 200 × 116 cm Eckbo Foundation, Oslo

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23 Portrait of Mary Alice Eckbo, 1914. Oil on canvas, 190 × 92 cm Eckbo Foundation, Oslo

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‘I am only too glad there is someone who takes interest in him at all. He started out so talently [sic], but never succeeded in making a fortune of it – and then he died much too young.’ 1 In 2010 a painting by Thorvald Hellesen appeared at auction that had never been seen in the public record before. Surfacing at a time when the market for modern art was in high demand and fetching record prices for works by both celebrated and lesser-known artists, Untitled (Abstract Composition) [Pl. 26] should have attracted attention among collectors and those familiar with his output. Not because it commanded a high price; at $11,275 it sold for slightly below its lower estimate.2 Nor because it pointed to a suddenly lukewarm market; sales of Hellesen’s work both during his lifetime and beyond had always been modest. Rather the painting should have raised eyebrows because it did not resemble anything else known by or attributed to him. Signed but not dated, it is stylistically without context. Thus it offered an opportunity to revisit what had become the conventional wisdom surrounding Hellesen, all the more so since scholarship on him had remained somewhat sparse and unchallenged since its emergence in the early 1980s. Instead it suffered the fate of so many of the artist’s works over the years, remaining all but forgotten once it was sold into a private collection.

The painting is exemplary of the myriad challenges surrounding the study and analysis of Hellesen’s art. Its non-objective design is a labyrinth of form and colour seemingly without reference to anything outside of itself, much like the fragmentary details of his life albeit one without a fully resolved idea as to how and when things unfolded. Its composition and palette have led some to situate it within an earlier phase of his career, but its signature matches the way the artist signed works made nearly ten years later. Such paradoxes are inherent to examining Hellesen’s art. Sorting out his chequered career can be like entering a maze; the point of entry − the beginning of his artistic life − and the final destination − the works made in the years leading up to his untimely death − are clear enough. But navigating between those two points is where things get obfuscated by missing or apocryphal biographical details, undated or unsigned works (often both), gaps in his production and seemingly sudden shifts or U-turns in his stylistic development, leading to confusion in trying to trace a clear trajectory of his evolution as an artist. Perhaps until now.

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Ludvig Karsten, Tuberculosis, 1907 Oil on canvas, 167 × 110 cm.

National Museum, Oslo

FIG. 1

In the decades since the resurgence of interest in Hellesen first sparked and then sputtered, some 50 works have appeared at auction, the majority of which are works on paper, many with signatures and dates. Nearly a third of them were first shown in 1986 by Paris dealer Marcel Fleiss, whose landmark exhibition of Hellesen’s work (11 paintings and 25 drawings) at Galerie 1900– 2000, accompanied by an authoritative catalogue and essay by Gladys Fabre, rescued the artist from the dustbin of history and created a market for his work out of thin air.3 As those works were 1 Copy of letter from Sylvia Wiese to Gladys Cyprien Fabre, 3 June 1976, Salvesen/WieseBromander family collection and archive, Norway. Fabre had first written to her a week sold and then resold on the secondary market, other earlier about plans to include Hellesen in a forthcoming book about Concrete Art in Europe objects came to light through public and private between the wars. It sparked the beginning of a journey that helped bring Hellesen out of the sales, and a slow but steady flow of Hellesen’s art margins of European Modernism over the next two decades.

2 The work sold as Abstrakt komposition, signed but not dated, by Bukowskis Stockholm, was finally circulating in what had become a global 3

Tuesday, 4 May 2010 (lot 00320), Spring Modern Sale 555. Estimate: SEK 100,000–125,000 (USD 13,750–17,188), sold for SEK 82,000 (USD 11,275).

Thorvald Hellesen (1888–1937), ed. Gladys C. Fabre, exh. cat. (Paris: Galerie 1900–2000, 1986).

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52 Composition, 1920.

Oil on canvas, 149.5 × 149.5 cm Musée d´Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris, achat Eivind Eckbo en 1982, Inv. AMVP 2195 53 Composition, 1920.

Oil on canvas, 258 × 203 cm National Museum, Oslo

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67 Woman with Guitar (Wrestlers), 1920.

Oil on canvas, 186 × 141 cm Musee d’histoire et d Art de Chloet, France

68 Dancers, 1925.

Oil on canvas, 299 × 260 cm Eckbo Foundation, Oslo

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78 Untitled (Geometric Composition), 1923.

Gouache on paper, 42 × 34 cm Eckbo Foundation, Oslo

79 Untitled (Geometric Composition), 1927.

Gouache on cardboard, 29 × 21 cm National Museum, Oslo

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80 Untitled (Geometric Composition), 1923.

Gouache on Masonite, 59.5 × 45 cm Collection Rikke Helmer, Oslo

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Greetings from the Board of Eckbos Legat Having existed for almost a century, Eckbos Legat – the Eckbo Foundation, Oslo – is one of the oldest charitable foundations in Norway, contributing significant amounts annually to initiatives in the fields of culture, art, sports, education, research, health and sustainable agriculture. The foundation was established by Alice Mary and Eivind Eckbo, and their legacy is still the basis for the foundation’s financial activities today. Eckbos Legat also owns an extensive collection of art and objects as well as Villa Eckbo – a complete and very well preserved residence designed by the architect Arnstein Arneberg.

Thorvald Hellesen was central to Alice Mary and Eivind Eckbo’s collecting and patronage, and his works still constitute the core of Eckbos Legat’s art collection. As the chairman of Eckbos Legat, it is therefore a great privilege for me to announce that we can now present the public with a book about this great artist. I would like to congratulate the authors Hilde Mørch, Dag Blakkisrud and Matthew Drutt, the photographers Finn Arne Johannessen and Yvonne Wilhelmsen and arnoldsche Art Publishers for their superlative work. It is especially gratifying for us that with his contribution the American art historian Matthew Drutt positions Thorvald Hellesen in the realm of international art history. This, in our opinion, is where he belongs.

I would also like to thank others who have helped make this publication possible, most particularly the Salvesen and Wiese-Bromander families, who have opened their homes and supplied significant historical information. I also thank the National Museum in Oslo, the Christen Sveaas Art Foundation / Kistefos Museum, and KODE Art Museums and Composer Homes in Bergen, Norway, and Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris and Musée d’Art et d’Histoire de Cholet, France.

We hope our intention for this book will be fulfilled: to generate interest in Thorvald Hellesen and his era and to engender an understanding of his special artistic expression.

Oslo, February 2022 Richard Arnesen Board chairman

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