Odd Nerdrum. Norwegian figurative painter.

Odd Nerdrum (born April 8, 1944, Sweden), is really a Norwegian figurative painter. The themes and magnificence in Nerdrum’s work, based onanecdote and narrative, and the major influence of the painters Rembrandt and Caravaggio place him in direct conflict with the abstraction and conceptual art considered acceptable in much of his native Norway.

Nerdrum creates 6 to 8 paintings each year that have been categorized as: Still paintings realistic of small objects like bricks, portraits and self portraits whose subjects are dressed as though from some other serious amounts of place, and enormous paintings, allegorical naturally that present feeling of the apocalyptic, and again reference another time.
Nerdrum claims that his art should be understood as kitsch rather than art as such. “On Kitsch“, a manifesto composed by Nerdrum describes the distinction he makes between kitsch and art.

Odd Nerdrum, Self-Portrait In Golden Robe

Biography

Early life

Odd Nerdrum was created in 1944, in Sweden, during the last year of The second world war. His parents, Resistance fighters, had been delivered to Sweden from German-occupied Norway to direct guerrilla activities from outside the nation. Annually later, at the conclusion with the war, Odd and the parents moved back to Norway. Nerdrum’s mother, Lillemor immediately after that went to New York to examine in the Fashion Institute of Technology. The sensation to be unwanted and abandoned Nerdrum felt at this time would stick with him until he was in his late forties, where time however start to view the underlying causes of the sensations he felt. In 1950, Nerdrum’s parents divorced, leaving Lillemor to improve two young children, Odd, along with a younger brother, by hand.
Nerdrum’s father, Johan Nerdrum later remarried. Although he was supportive, he kept a difficult distance between himself and the son. At his death, Odd was asked never to attend the funeral. He discovered three years later that Johan wasn't his biological father. Odd, was in fact, the effect of a liaison between David Sandved and Lillemor. Lillemor and Sandved had stood a relationship ahead of Lillemor’s marriage, and also this was resumed through the war inside a period when Johan was absent. Richard Vine, art critic, describes this episode in Nerdrum’s life together which created “a conflicted preoccupation with origins and identity”, that “came natural to Nerdrum” and was represented as part of his pictures.



Early education


Nerdrum began his formal education in 1951 in Oslo, in the private Rudolf Steiner school as opposed to within the standard, public school system. This education would set Odd aside from his contemporaries. The device took it's origin from anthroposophy that saw mankind as once living in harmony with all the universe the good news is existing in the lesser state of rationality. Through spiritual or esoteric practice, Steiner believed mankind can find its long ago with a reference to higher realities also to renewed harmony with the universe. Learning for college kids was often kinesthetic, as an example, through dramatic enactments of background fantasy, and through musical exercises which were reminiscent of the patterns available on ancient Greek vases, depicting figures moving in parallel patterns. These parallel patterns might be within later Nerdrum work, just like a sensibility for iconographic images and costume.

Jens Bjørneboe, a grade school mentor said Nerdrum even at that age exhibited tendencies of innate talent and industry, but in addition impatience with individuals with less ability than himself.


Artistic study

Nerdrum began study on the Art Academy of Oslo, but became dissatisfied with all the direction of recent art, and started to teach himself the way to paint in a Neo Baroque style, with the guidance of Rembrandt’s painting technique and work as a primary influence. Of the impact he felt on seeing two of Rembrandt’s paintings Batavernes Oath of Claudius Civilis, and Simon bless the baby Jesus, Nerdrum says it had been “Pervasive. Like finding home. I'm able to say I discovered a home on this picture,… The strange thing with Rembrandt may be the confidence he inspires - like once you warm both hands over a stove. Without Rembrandt [we][art] could have been so poor,” By abandoning the accepted path of recent art, Nerdrum placed himself in direct opposition to many areas of the school, including his primary painting instructor, his fellow students, plus a curriculum designed to present Norway being a country with an up-to-date artistic culture. He, in his own words was chased from the academy following a two-year period being a “scroungy mutt”. Years later Nerdrum said,
I saw that I is at the operation of building a choice that could end in defeat. By choosing those qualities which were so alien to my own , personal time, I needed to quit concurrently the art where the art of our time rests. I'd to paint in defiance of my own , personal era with no protection with the era’s superstructure. Briefly put I would paint myself into isolation.

Nerdrum later studied with Joseph Beuys, at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf.