The Norwegian Art and Craft Club of Brooklyn, 1938-1956
“There is much to learn and much to teach”1by Laurann Gilbertson
In 1938 a group of amateur and semiprofessional artists organized the Norwegian Art and Craft Club of Brooklyn, New York. The objectives of the club were to promote interest in art and craft among its members and the public through exhibitions, lectures, discussions, and classes. The club’s first exhibition was held in a hall above Thor Solberg, Inc., a framing business and gallery at 530 86th Street. Jonas Lie, famed Norwegian-American artist and president of the National Academy of Design, opened the exhibition with a public lecture.
The club, although founded by and led by Norwegian Americans, did not limit its membership by ethnicity or by gender. It gave equal status to fine art and Norwegian decorative arts. Members created and exhibited paintings, drawings, sculpture, carving, rosemaling (Norwegian decorative painting), tapestry, and knitting. Many classes were taught at the club, which was located first at 4806 4th Avenue and then at 501 46th Street. The club held exhibitions at the club, as well as at local studios and at the Brooklyn Museum, the Brooklyn Public Library, the Riverside Museum in Brooklyn, the Staten Island Institute of Arts and Sciences, and the Argent Galleries in Manhattan.
There were 28 founding members. By the late 1940s, the club membership had grown to more than 100. Vesterheim has, in the past, offered exhibitions of individual members of the Norwegian Art and Craft Club, including Bernhard Berntsen, Michael Hoiland, William Torjesen, and Carl Strand. A new exhibition at Vesterheim, The Norwegian Art and Craft Club of Brooklyn, 1938-1956, aims to bring works by club members back together and to feature an important artistic and cultural institution.
The exhibition also honors the efforts of Rolf Erickson, J. Harry Andersen, and Josefa Andersen, who volunteered countless hours researching the artists of the Norwegian Art and Craft Club. They also conducted interviews with many of the artists in the 1980s, and helped to build Vesterheim’s collection of fine art.
When the Norwegian Art and Craft Club (NACC) organized in 1938, they met in the home of Karl Larsen and elected him president. Like many of the club members, Larsen had emigrated from
Norway with some artistic training, but found employment in New York outside the arts. Born in Flekkefjord, Norway, Larsen studied in Oslo at Statens Kunstakademiet (National Academy of Arts) and Statens Håndverks og Kunstindustriskole (National Academy of Craft and Applied Art). He came to Brooklyn in 1927 and worked as a shipyard foreman for 50 years. He also played semiprofessional soccer with Sporting Club Gjøa, part of the Scandinavian-American Athletic League. His painting titled Backyard in Brooklyn captures a uniquely urban scene. There is no grass or trees, just cars, fences, and the neighboring houses and apartment buildings.
Ralph Dahl’s Sunday Morning in Brooklyn is another urban scene, this time painted from a window at NACC. Whereas Larsen may have painted the view he usually saw of his backyard, Dahl seems to have captured the atypical, a quiet moment on the usually busy streets in the Bay Ridge neighborhood of Brooklyn.
William Torjesen’s artwork also expresses a strong sense of place. Torjesen grew up in the coastal city of Kristiansand, Norway, and he longed to become an artist and paint the sea. However, when his father died, he was sent to a technical school for courses in architectural interiors and furniture design. After immigrating to Brooklyn in 1920, he found an endless variety of views to paint along the shores, beaches, and harbors of the borough.
Fascinated with characters and the construction projects around him, Berhard Berntsen provides a realistic view into the life and work of men constructing buildings, particularly skyscrapers, and bridges. Berntsen arrived in New York in 1919, but after a short stint in the army, moved to Chicago. He had no formal art training in Norway, but he came with an interest and talent. He took classes at the Art Institute in Chicago and, after returning to New York in about 1928, at the NACC and the Art Students’ League. During his lunch break, with grease pencil on newspaper or even the steel girders, he would often sketch his coworkers or people that he saw on the street or at the bus stop. Even in these rough sketches he captures the subjects’ bearing and mannerisms.
In Before Hard Hats from 1938, Berntsen records both coworkers and tasks. Berntsen experimented with several different artistic styles and this painting, in particular, is reminiscent of Works Progress Administration (WPA) murals. Berntsen was involved with a WPA mural project in 19361937, working on a design by Sakaro Suzuki for the Willard Parker Hospital.2
Berntsen’s artworks were featured in several solo shows in New York, but perhaps the most widely-exhibited NACC member was Vilna Jørgen Morpurgo. Born Adele Vilhelma Ludvikke Nilsen-Vinje in Oslo, she became interested in the arts after her family moved to Sweden. She studied ballet and acting, and then sculpture and painting. She continued her studies in Paris and exhibited her artworks in Amsterdam, Berlin, Paris, and Rome. In 1929 she represented Norway at the International Exposition in Barcelona. By 1940 she had established a studio in New York and exhibited both independently and with the Norwegian Art and Craft Club.
Morpurgo often painted portraits, though she sought to express the soul of the subjects rather than their outward appearance. Journalist Alvena Seckar said about Morpurgo’s style, “These pictures are painted with great vehemence,
Bernhard Berntsen, Before Hard Hats, 1938. From left to right: Charlie Anderson, a carpenter; Berntsen and Christian Johnsen raising a sidewalk bridge column; Berntsen constructing a scaffold; Berntsen again, in a hoist tower pulling a rope; and foreman Jimmy Thinker, kneeling and reading blueprints. Oil on canvas, 36 x 48 inches.
Vesterheim 1984.056.005—Museum purchase.
boldness and almost violence, yet they exhibit great control and careful selection of color and methods of application suitable to each type of subject the artist paints.”3
Among the artwork by NACC members in the Vesterheim collection are many portraits, done in oil, charcoal, and pencil. Some are realistic, like William Ekgren’s drawing of
weaver Maria Mundal. Others are quick and often humorous sketches, likely done during NACC gatherings. On a postcard used by the club to announce classes and exhibitions, we see May Heartness Faaland, herself a club member, sitting for a class or creative session. We are able to see some of the others members’ projects in the photograph as well. A portrait of Faaland by David Jacobsen is also in the Vesterheim exhibition.
There was a close and symbiotic relationship between the Brooklyn artists and several area art businesses. Thor Solberg, Inc., hosted the first NACC exhibit and event. Thorn Norheim ran Norheim Art Studio at 6007 8th Street from 1944 into the 1950s. He sold art supplies, framed artworks, taught classes focusing on technique, and offered gallery space for exhibitions of student and NACC works. An accomplished artist in his own right, Norheim was known for portraits and landscapes, as well as seascapes inspired by his childhood in Hvaler, south of Fredrikstad, Norway. Even after he moved to California and finally to Missouri, he continued to paint, teach, and encourage artists at all skill levels through clubs. Norheim estimated that he’d had more than 8,000 students since he began teaching in 1936.4 His students included Eldrid Skjold Arntzen, Vesterheim Gold Medalist in rosemaling, and Bob Ross, artist and host of The Joy of Painting, on public television.
Many of the NACC members were Norwegian immigrants. There are a few images of Norway painted from memory, like Norheim’s seascape and Erling Tjønn’s quiet scene of boathouses with snow-covered mountains in the background. Carl Strand captured many of his scenes on a two-year trip back to Norway. Born in Trondheim, he left for the Midwest at age 14 with an uncle. Strand never really settled anywhere. While living in Chicago, he attended the Academy of Art there, then continued his art studies in St. Louis and Kansas City, Missouri. He worked in Sweden, painting miniatures, and met his wife, Leila, who was also a watercolorist. The Strands lived in the United States for a while and then returned to Scandinavia in the late 1930s to sketch and paint. In the 1940s, they lived in the Bronx and Carl joined the Norwegian Art and Craft Club. He exhibited many of his Norwegian watercolors in NACC exhibitions.
William Ekgren’s style was more abstract than most of his fellow NACC artists. His style might be described as Divisionism, the use of distinct dots or parallel lines of color. His work is also characterized by saturated and dark colors. Michael Hoiland also tried Pointillism later, but during the club years, he created more realistic expressions in paint and glass. Hoiland was among the NACC members who created, exhibited, and taught fine craft. His specialty was stained glass, which he had studied in Stavanger and Bergen before emigrating. In the greater New York area, he worked independently and for several firms, making windows, exterior lamps, and sculptural figures. Viking ships and characters from Norse mythology were favorite motifs. By painting on the inner surface of the glass, Hoiland could add detail and a historical richness.
Maria Mundal often chose tapestry from her repertoire of weaving techniques so that she could depict motifs from Norwegian literature, history, and folklore, or express her religious beliefs. Mundal and her sisters learned to weave at
Maria Mundal, chair seat cover, midtwentieth century. Wool on cotton, 20
Vesterheim
home from their mother in Fjærland, Sogn, Norway. Mundal married artist Mons Breidvik and they, with his seven children, immigrated to New York in the 1920s. When the children were grown and after helping raise awareness of the Nazi occupation of Norway during World War II through articles and lectures, she returned to weaving. Mundal is represented in the Vesterheim exhibition by a chair cover done in geometric tapestry, a technique she said she learned at age 13.
As a school girl in Stavanger, Karli Skjæveland Waagenes loved to draw. After immigrating with her young family in 1928, she tried painting. Vesterheim has two of her early works, the portrait of a young girl done during a class and a still life, but it was rosemaling that would become her specialty. She painted on wood and tin in bright colors and taught classes both at NACC and her own studio.
Karli Waagenes was a loyal member of the Norwegian Art and Craft Club and also a strong supporter of its artists, providing temporary housing or art supplies in lean times. Members formed lasting relationships, artistically and socially. The talents, skills, and enthusiasm built by the club continued long after it disbanded in 1956.
Karli Waagenes (Johnsen), tray with rosemaling, 1940s. Oil on tin, 12.5 inches in diameter. Vesterheim 1983.025.008—Gift of the artist.
Endnotes
1 Thorn Norheim quoted in “En kunstner og hans elever,” Nordisk Tidende, October 1946. Translation by Josefa Andersen, January 1984. Vesterheim Archives.
2 Clifford Miller, Steel Girders and Steeplechases: The Life and Art of Berhard H. Bertnsen (Red Wing, Minnesota: Lone Oak Press, 2001), 32.
3 Quoted by Karsten Roedder in the biography statement for Vilna Morpurgo, brochure for her solo exhibition at The Argent Galleries, New York, February 2-14, 1948. Vesterheim Archives.
4 “Vesterheim Gift,” Vinland, 22 March 1984, 1.
About the Author
Laurann Gilbertson holds a B.A. in anthropology and a M.S. in textiles and clothing from Iowa State University. She has been the Textile Curator at Vesterheim NorwegianAmerican Museum in Decorah, Iowa, for 19 years and was recently named Chief Curator.