Richard Mortensen

Richard Mortensen ( born October 23, 1910 in Copenhagen, Denmark, † January 6, 1993 in Copenhagen) was a Danish painter and one of the greatest Danish artists of the 20th century.

Mortensen studied in the years 1931-1932 at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen. In 1937, Mortensen undertakes a study trip to Paris. He met there the most important representatives of surrealism.

Early thirties Mortensen was influenced by the works of Wassily Kandinsky. His art of this period shows an expression of the abstract to Kandinsky as also linked to his formal language of Surrealism.

In 1934, Mortensen is co-founder of the artist group "lines". Mortensen's art has a spontaneous expressionistic character later. Its still later paintings are characterized by large, bright, vivid colors surfaces - against each other - form the space of the painting.

In 1946, Mortensen gets the Edvard Munch price.

In 1947 he moved to Paris, where he will live and work until 1964.

In 1950 he was awarded the Kandinsky Prize.

Richard Mortensen is a participant in the documenta 1 (1955), Documenta II (1959) and also the documenta III in Kassel in 1964. In 1960 he took part in the Venice Biennale.

After his return to Denmark in 1964 he received a professorship at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen, where he taught until 1980.

In 1968 he was awarded the Thorvaldsen Medal.

Mortensen died on January 6, 1993 in Copenhagen.

Important individual exhibitions

(Selection)

Sources and Literature

• Exhibition catalog, documentation, art of the XX. century, Munich 1955
• Exhibition catalog: II.documenta '59. Art after 1945; Catalogue: Volume 1: Painting; Volume 2: sculpture; Volume 3: Prints; Text band; Kassel / Cologne 1959
• Exhibition catalog: documenta III. International Exhibition; Catalogue: Volume 1: Paintings and Sculpture; Volume 2: Hand drawings; Industrial design, graphic; Kassel / Cologne 1964