Gunnar S. Gundersen (25 December 1921 – 16 January 1983) or Gunnar S. (as he came to be known) was a Norwegian

modernist Modernism was an early 20th-century movement in literature, visual arts, and music that emphasized experimentation, abstraction, and Subjectivity and objectivity (philosophy), subjective experience. Philosophy, politics, architecture, and soc ...

painter Painting is a Visual arts, visual art, which is characterized by the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called "matrix" or "Support (art), support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with ...

Biography

Gunnar S. Gundersen was born in

Førde Førde is a former municipality in the county of Sogn og Fjordane, Norway. It was located in the traditional district of Sunnfjord. The administrative center was the town of Førde which in 2016 had 10,255 inhabitants. Other villages in Før ...

, in the county of

Sogn og Fjordane Sogn og Fjordane (; literally "Parish and the Fjords") was a Counties of Norway, county in western Norway, from 1 January 1919 to 31 December 2019, after it was merged to become part of Vestland county. Bordering previous counties Møre og Romsda ...

, Norway. Gundersen was among the young artists who attended the

Oslo National Academy of the Arts The Oslo National Academy of the Arts (, ''KHiO'') is a tertiary institution in Oslo, Norway, that provides education in visual arts, design and performing arts. It is one of two public institutes of higher learning in Norway that teaches in v ...

in the years after Norway was liberated from Nazi-Germany. He was a pupil of

Aage Storstein Aage Storstein (26 July 1900 – 7 May 1983) was a Norwegian artist. Aage Storstein was born in Stavanger in the county of Rogaland, Norway. Aage Storstein studied in Paris at Academie Ranson, Académie de la Grande Chaumière, and Academie C ...

at the National Art Academy. He made his debut as early as 1947 at the Autumn Exhibition in Oslo. His generation wanted to free themselves for the traditional Norwegian figurative painting and sought inspiration from leading artists in Europe at the time. Danish artist

Richard Mortensen Richard Mortensen (23 October 1910 – 6 January 1993) was a Danish painter. Biography Richard Strange Mortensen was born in Copenhagen, Denmark. He studied between 1931 and 1932 at the Royal Danish Academy of Art in Copenhagen. Influenced by the ...

, as well as

Auguste Herbin Auguste Herbin (29 April 1882 – 31 January 1960) was a French Painting, painter of modern art. He is best known for his Cubism, Cubist and abstract art, abstract paintings consisting of colorful Geometry, geometric figures. He co-founded the gr ...

Serge Poliakoff Serge Poliakoff (January 8, 1900 – October 12, 1969) was a Russian-born French modernist painter belonging to the 'New' École de Paris ( Tachisme). Biography Serge Poliakoff was born in Moscow in 1900, the thirteenth of fourteen children. H ...

and

Victor Vasarely Victor Vasarely (; born Győző Vásárhelyi, ; 9 April 1906 – 15 March 1997) was a Hungarian-French artist, who is widely accepted as a "grandfather" and leader of the Op art movement. His work titled ''Zebra'', created in 1937, i ...

. He belonged to a group of younger artists who were often referred to as ''Dødsgjengen'' together with fellow artists

Ludvig Eikaas Ludvig Eikaas (20 December 1920 – 5 September 2010) was a Norway, Norwegian painter, graphic artist and sculptor. Eikaas was among the first artists in Norway to work in a purely non-figurative idiom. Biography Ludvig Eikaas was born in the sma ...

and Odd Tandberg. When he chose his modernist form he was quickly acknowledged as one of the leaders in the

abstract art Abstract art uses visual language of shape, form, color and line to create a Composition (visual arts), composition which may exist with a degree of independence from visual references in the world. ''Abstract art'', ''non-figurative art'', ''non- ...

form in Norway. Gunnar S. is now regarded as one of the most significant painters of the Norwegian post-war period. Even though he never received the international acclaim he might have deserved, he became a unifying figure among his contemporaries in Norway. His work has been an inspiration for many artists in later generations. Gunnar S. Gundersen
''Norsk Biografisk Leksikon'' This expression is at first glance a rendition of flat color fields. However, through extensive knowledge of theories of visual perception Gunnar S. is able to transform the color fields into images with a unique spatial quality, what Gunnar S. himself called "inconsistent space."

References

1921 births 1983 deaths 20th-century Norwegian painters Norwegian male painters People from Førde 20th-century Norwegian male artists {{Norway-painter-stub