ICON by ATIM presents Henrik Saar

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HENRIK SAAR A Healing Journey Of Art

By Viviana Puello

Henrik Saar is an esteemed artist who has received numerous awards, including the title of International Master since 2010 and the Medusa Aurera contest award for Best Painter at the International Academy of Modern Arts in Rome in 2019.

Born in 1967 in Sønderborg, near the Danish-German border, Henrik’s mother is Danish, and his father is from Germany. They moved to Fredericia in 1970, where his father established himself as an independent architect. Fredericia has been his family’s hometown ever since, where Henrik still resides today. Henrik grew up with two older sisters in a loving family that deeply valued creativity, freedom, and intellectual skills.

At 14, Henrik experienced a stroke that transformed him into a sensitive boy who used art to express himself. He poured all his energy into drawing, poetry, and music to self-express.

In 1990, Henrik moved to Copenhagen to pursue his artistic career, learning from established artists and studying at the art museums in Copenhagen. In 1992, he returned to Fredericia, where he started working at the Teacher’s Seminarium. Henrik worked as a high school teacher for a few years while remaining active as an independent artist.

Despite many health challenges, including epilepsy, Henrik has built a successful artistic career. His works showcase meticulously arranged symbols and figures with excellent color, movement, and form compositions. His surreal imagery is thought-provoking and touches on social themes.

Since the beginning, Henrik has seen himself as a lifetime artist, expressing himself through sketches and poems. He believes that pain and suffering are his strongest sources of inspiration. He believes that the pandemic should

inspire people to develop a passion for art to rehabilitate and become stronger. Henrik believes that people can expand their depth and understanding of life through pain, loss, and suffering.

Henrik’s art is characterized by transformationalism, a word he uses to describe his art. He aims to make his pictures reflect everything he sees together with his inner soul in one shot. Henrik paints all his paintings with the same three oil colors + black and white but finds it challenging to create something surprising and different every time. Each of his pictures is filled with unspoken content that is even more real than what can be put into words. Henrik often creates images of what he believes will happen tomorrow. His greatest inspirations are Salvador Dali, symbolism, Kirkeby, Van Gogh, and Munch.

“Angel Station” Oil on Canvas 39”X 31”

CAN YOU DESCRIBE YOUR ARTISTIC STYLE?

“All my artworks are built on what I know and what I don’t consciously know yet. I paint figurative oil paintings and have developed a technique where the motif from the beginning is built up in pasta white ground. Upon this structure, I mix additively pure primary and secondary layers of colors transparently upon each other. To achieve light, I use a scalpel to scrape some paint to use the light from the white ground. In an alchemical process that results in very deeply shiny and pure deep/light effects, which extends the 3D effect.

Parallel to this, I work differently spontaneously with the colors directly in paste layers applied with a painter’s knife in turbulent modeling layers. That opens up the image to a faster and more open expression”.

WHAT IS YOUR CREATIVE PROCESS?

“I have always been sketching whatever I had in mind. It’s a habit without immediate purpose, but I always archive these sketches. While composing a new painting, I take advantage of this treasure of drawings (my visual vocabulary) and transform them into the content you meet in my images. That maintains a very personal and liberated figuration. My figures are typical for me. You do not doubt the creator.

When the principles of Windows were released in the mid 9’ties, I started to integrate these principles in my compositions, and in 2006 I developed the circle windows principles to be a much more dynamic way of composing. Thus, my paintings are typically made of multiple layers of overlapping content and multiple layers of transparent primary and secondary colors. They are usually very profoundly worked and remain mysterious even to me as they often tell something about what may come tomorrow. However, I always understand it after it happens”.

HOW AND WHEN DID YOU DISCOVER YOU WANTED TO BE AN ARTIST?

“I have made drawings and cartoons all my life. I have always had a visual comment on whatever happened. It was attached to me as who I am as naturally as breathing. My humor, irony, and way of interpreting what happened around me. My father was an architect, and I enjoyed being with him in his studio and learned much from him and was taught freehand drawing in the evenings.

“The Big MMXX Stonemason” Oil on Canvas 47”x 33”

As a teenager, I began working officially in his studio, doing copies of the architect’s drawings and whatever work I could handle. I loved his studio’s atmosphere and knew I would work with something like that all my life. My dilemma was that I wasn’t very fond of construction and technical details, but I still was more

passionate about cartoons. As I didn’t know what to do about it, I started studying to become a teacher instead. At the seminary in Tønder 1988, I tumbled into teaching psychology and Freudian psychoanalysis, the French Revolution in historical perspectives, nihilism from religious views, and postmodernism in art. On my 21st

birthday, my parents gave me a set of oil paintings. I was utterly hyperactive in all fields. One night I had a violently emotional dream that told me to pack up and go out into the world and become an artist. That’s what I did - The next day, I left the girl I lived with, left my studies, and started my life as an artist at the age of 22”.

“An Ode to My Father” Oil on Canvas

WHAT MESSAGE DOES YOUR WORK TRANSMIT TO YOUR AUDIENCE?

“I seek to create images that are open to interpretation. Through my ability to empathize with my image, I want to make a visual poetic expression of how I feel and how I feel the world feels. My pictures want something from me, so they also want something from others. The world is changing all the time gradually, shifting faster and faster, but almost imperceptibly, from hardware to software. We become

progressively more and more electrified. That’s why I soften some of my otherwise static structures or architecture and thereby create a difficult-to-manage space with many perspective angles because that’s how I feel the world and my own life look like”.

HAS ANY PART OF YOUR STORY INFLUENCED WHAT YOU DO NOW?

“The most life-changing milestone in my history already happened when, as a

14-year-old, I had a brain hemorrhage due to overexertion in sports and was then affected by epilepsy. Where competitive swimming had filled my life, I was suddenly directed to do something else. That opened the door to drawing, poetry, literature, philosophy, psychology, and music, gradually moving me further away from everything and everyone I had previously been a part of. It became a life of new interests and friends, so if anything has ever had a significant visible impact on my life as an artist, it is that incident.

“The Gift” Oil on Canvas 39” x 31”

Today, I can hardly imagine what my life would have been like if I had never been affected by this incident, and I find it challenging to regret it as an accident. After all, I’m pretty content to be me. It has been an exciting journey so far”.

AWARDS, RECOGNITIONS AND PUBLICATIONS

1) International price Jan Vermeer - Top of the world. Certificate + publicationAwarded by the Academy Italia in Arte Nel Mondo 2023.

2) “Vatican Artists of Fame,” arranged by Gallery IlCollezionista. 2022 - Certificat + publication + video.

3) The juried Con Giunti awarded museum tour 2022 + publication + video.

4) Art star in the prestigious art book De Agostini - Atlante Del Arte Contemporanea 2021 - Book + Certificate + video.

5) The international price Hermes - The divine Messenger (Trophy) awarded by Italia in Art Nel Mondo 2021.

6) The international price David (trophy) awarded by Academy Italia in Arte Nel Mondo 2021.

7) The juried Autumn Exhibition KE21 in Copenhagen 2021. - Certificate + publication.

8) The International Triennale, Galleria Medina Rome, It 2020. - Certificate + publication + video Included in the Great Encyclopedia of International Art - Art Universal.

9) Winner of Apollo DinisiacoInternational price - Certificate + publication - Awarded by the International Academy of Signification 2020.

10) The Venice Biennale 2019. Certificate + publication + video.

11) Winner of the Medusa Aurea Contest Best Painter 2018 - 2019Certificate + publication Awarded by the international academy for Contemporary and Modern Art, Rome It. 2019.

“My shelter in the cloud” Oil on Canvas 27”x 23” 2022 “The Sourcerer” Oil on Canvas 27”x 23”

12) The Florence Biennale 2015.Certificate + publication.

13) The juried Autumn Exhibition (KE) in Copenhagen 2012 - Certificate + publication.

14) La Accademia de Bellas Artes en Lima, Peru Solo exhibition 59 Artworks 2003 + Publication.

by

www.henriksaar.dk

@henrik.saar

Henrik Saar

@henriksaar

“Kissing an Angel” Oil on Canvas 27”X 23” 2023

“Passion in D-minor” Oil on Canvas 27”X 23” 2022

Each artwork, as a two-edged sword, cuts a piece of myself and the world that made me make my art a picture of my time.

Henrik Saar

“Brisbane Storm” Sublimation on Aluminum