Rolf Aamot (born 28 September 1934) is a
Norwegian
Norwegian, Norwayan, or Norsk may refer to:
*Something of, from, or related to Norway, a country in northwestern Europe
* Norwegians, both a nation and an ethnic group native to Norway
* Demographics of Norway
*The Norwegian language, including ...
painter
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called the "matrix" or "support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush, but other implements, such as knives, sponges, and ...
,
film director
A film director controls a film's artistic and dramatic aspects and visualizes the screenplay (or script) while guiding the film crew and actors in the fulfilment of that vision. The director has a key role in choosing the cast members, ...
,
photographer
A photographer (the Greek φῶς (''phos''), meaning "light", and γραφή (''graphê''), meaning "drawing, writing", together meaning "drawing with light") is a person who makes photographs.
Duties and types of photographers
As in other ...
and tonal-image
[Published by The Bergen Museum of Artbr>]
1998: ''Electromagnetic energy shapes the colour/photone and curvilineartone span of tonal image art. The laserpower radiance of atoms. The imagetone quantumsystem turns everything into sinewy relations – signalling movement to all our cells. The body builds its world by psychophysiological images. We exist, and exist in, the infinity of perception – matter, identity, intensity, rhythm, and the logic of the cells of our bodies - opening towards the heterogeneous, the void and the exile. The tones of images are, like tones of sound, a unity of dream and act. The information value of imagetones are determined by their frequencies, span, coherence, pulseform, modulation and polarization. The directionality pulse of particlewaves are sinusoidal.'
. composer. Since the 1950s, Aamot has been a pioneer within the field of electronic painting, exploring the emerging technology as it combines with the traditional arts of painting, music, film, theatre, and ballet. Aamot studied painting at the
Oslo National Academy of the Arts (
Norwegian National Academy of Craft and Art Industry
The National College of Art and Design ( no, Statens håndverks- og kunstindustriskole) was established in 1818.
In 1996 the National College of Art and Design became part of Oslo National Academy of the Arts (''Kunsthøgskolen i Oslo'', KHiO).
...
and
Norwegian National Academy of Fine Arts
The Norwegian National Academy of Arts ( no, Statens kunstakademi) is a Norwegian Academy offering studies in the area of Fine Art. The Academy currently offers 3-year bachelor and 2-year MA programmes. The "Norwegian National Academy of the Arts" ...
), and film at
Dramatiska Institutet
The Swedish Institute of Dramatic Art ( sv, Dramatiska Institutet, DI), also called the University College of Film, Radio, Television and Theatre was a Swedish university college in Stockholm that provided education programs about activities su ...
in Stockholm. Aamot is known for his work as a painter, electronic painter, art photographer, graphic artist, film director, tonal-image composer and cultural author.
Much of his work consists of creating electronic tonal images and thus his work contains elements of photography but is hard to pigeon hole. It is frequently a form of performance art with abstract photographic elements. Since 1966, Aamot's works have been displayed in
Scandinavia
Scandinavia; Sámi languages: /. ( ) is a subregion in Northern Europe, with strong historical, cultural, and linguistic ties between its constituent peoples. In English usage, ''Scandinavia'' most commonly refers to Denmark, Norway, and Swe ...
, France (
Paris
Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. ...
),
Berlin
Berlin is Capital of Germany, the capital and largest city of Germany, both by area and List of cities in Germany by population, by population. Its more than 3.85 million inhabitants make it the European Union's List of cities in the European U ...
(Germany),
Brussels
Brussels (french: Bruxelles or ; nl, Brussel ), officially the Brussels-Capital Region (All text and all but one graphic show the English name as Brussels-Capital Region.) (french: link=no, Région de Bruxelles-Capitale; nl, link=no, Bruss ...
(Belgium),
Venice
Venice ( ; it, Venezia ; vec, Venesia or ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto region. It is built on a group of 118 small islands that are separated by canals and linked by over 400 bridges. The isla ...
(Italy),
Moscow (Soviet Union and subsequently Russia), Kraków (Poland), the United States and Japan. His work can be found in several important public collections. Aamot has been represented at several international film and art festivals throughout the world.
Background
Aamot was, from a very early age, taught after Bauhaus principles by his father Randulf Aamot, a master carpenter and wood carver. In 1952, he had his first solo exhibit of paintings at the Paus Knudsen Gallery in Bergen. In 1953, at the age of 18, while still attending the
Norwegian National Academy of Craft and Art Industry
The National College of Art and Design ( no, Statens håndverks- og kunstindustriskole) was established in 1818.
In 1996 the National College of Art and Design became part of Oslo National Academy of the Arts (''Kunsthøgskolen i Oslo'', KHiO).
...
in
Oslo
Oslo ( , , or ; sma, Oslove) is the capital and most populous city of Norway. It constitutes both a county and a municipality. The municipality of Oslo had a population of in 2022, while the city's greater urban area had a population of ...
, he was awarded a major public commission for the
Natural History Museum at the University of Oslo
The Natural History Museum at the University of Oslo ( no, Naturhistorisk museum, NHM) is Norway's oldest and largest museum of natural history. It is situated in the neighborhood of Tøyen in Oslo, Norway.
It traces its roots to the Universit ...
.
[Translation of part of article (with one illustration of Rolf Aamot's frescoes at the Natural History Museum in Oslo) in La Lettre de ]
OCIM
n° 77: 'The frescoes in the Paleontological Museum in Oslo - a special case'. ''In 1955 ic(competition 1953, frescoes finished 1955) a young student at the Norwegian National Academy of Craft and Art Industry, Rolf Aamot, was chosen, by means of a competition, to paint dinosaurs and other creatures of the Secondary (Mesozoic
The Mesozoic Era ( ), also called the Age of Reptiles, the Age of Conifers, and colloquially as the Age of the Dinosaurs is the second-to-last era of Earth's geological history, lasting from about , comprising the Triassic, Jurassic and Creta ...
) Era on the walls of the museum. These paintings were originally meant to be an as exact reconstruction as possible, following the scientific advice of the paleontologist Anatol Heintz
Anatol Heintz (9 February 1898 – 23 February 1975) was a Russo-Norwegian palaeontologist.
He was born in Petrograd to the geophysicist Yevgeniy Alfredovich Heintz (1869–1918) and Olga Fyodorovna Hoffmann (1871–1958). He had two older si ...
. Aamot's initial drawings were practically "naturalist reconstructions" but the artist were to let them evolve into a painting of "the soul of the dinosaurs". When contemplating these frescoes today the visitor experiences the same sensations as when facing any other work of art. These dinosaurs are first of all what the artist wanted to create, before being "representations". Rolf Aamot's frescoes are the testimony of an artist on a scientific subject.'
Emmanuelle Huet, ''Des dinosaures en représentation''
From 1957 until 1960, he studied at the
Norwegian National Academy of Fine Arts
The Norwegian National Academy of Arts ( no, Statens kunstakademi) is a Norwegian Academy offering studies in the area of Fine Art. The Academy currently offers 3-year bachelor and 2-year MA programmes. The "Norwegian National Academy of the Arts" ...
with the painters
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 Col ...
and
Alexander Schultz
Alexander is a male given name. The most prominent bearer of the name is Alexander the Great, the king of the Ancient Greek kingdom of Macedonia who created one of the largest empires in ancient history.
Variants listed here are Aleksandar, Ale ...
, both of them firmly anchored in the effort to combine figuration and abstraction typical of the 1920s. He later studied Film at the
Dramatic Institute in
Stockholm.
Electronic art in television
Aamot's electronic tonal-image work "Evolution" (1966) with music by
Arne Nordheim
Arne Nordheim (20 June 1931 – 5 June 2010) was a Norwegian composer. Nordheim received numerous awards for his compositions, and from 1982 lived in the Norwegian government's honorary residence, Grotten, next to the Royal Palace in Oslo. H ...
was shown on
Norwegian television
Television in Norway was introduced in 1954, but the first television program was only shown in 1958, and regular broadcasts did not start until 1960. Like Denmark, Norway had only one television channel until the 1980s. Some 40% of the populatio ...
in 1967.
[Image of article from the Norwegian publication ''Programbladet'' (28 May - 3 June, Nr. 22, 1967)](_blank)
/ref> "Evolution" represented a milestone of a new art form in which television for the first time was used as an independent picture-artistic means of expression.''Norsk biografisk leksikon'' (Norwegian biography encyclopedia), 1999-2005 band 10
Throughout the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, Aamot created a series of works for television.
Video art and digital photopaintings
Aamot became a controversial artist in the 1960s and 1970s.
From the latter half of the 1980s, he worked with computer paintings on canvas, digital photopaintings and graphic art. He has continued to make video and film art, often in collaboration with the painter and composer
Bjørg Lødøen
Bjørg Lødøen (7 December 1931 – 5 March 2009) was a Norwegian painter, graphic artist, and composer.
Biography
Lødøen was born in Oslo, Norway.
In 1945, by way of her father she came to know the painter Xan Krohn. Krohn had been taking ...
and the photographer, dancer and choreographer
Kristin Lodoen Linder.
Selected works
Tonal-image compositions for screen
Television
*"Evolution" (1966)
*"Relieff nr.2" (1967–68)
*"BSK" (1968)
*"Visual" (1971)
*"Progress" (1977)
*"Structures" (1979)
*"Medusa" (1986)
*"Puls" (1986)
*"Close cluster" (Nærklang) (1987)
*"Expulsion" (1987)
Cinema
*"Relieff" (1966–67)
*"Kinetic Energy" (1967–68)
*"Vision" (1969)
*"Structures" (1970)
*"Actio" (1980)
*"Aurora Borealis" (1991)
*"Tide" (2000)
*"Energy" (2003)
*"U" (2005)
*"Ir" (2006)
*"Wirr" (2008)
*"Contra" (2009)
*"X" (2010)
Note
References
External links
Rolf Aamot official websiteInterview, 1 November 2010. "Rolf Aamot: One Of The World's Pioneers In Digital Art"Store Norske Leksikon (Norwegian encyclopedia)Bjørg Lødøen official websiteKristin Lødøen official websiteArt at the Worker´s Place, Oslo, Norway''Store norske leksikon'' (Norwegian encyclopedia) (
Kunnskapsforlaget
Kunnskapsforlaget () is a Norwegian publishing company based in Oslo.
Kunnskapsforlaget was established in 1975, as a partnership between H. Aschehoug & Co. (W. Nygaard) and Gyldendal Norsk Forlag. The purpose was to co-operate on publishing ...
, Oslo, Norway).
''Norsk biografisk leksikon'' (Norwegian biography encyclopedia), 1999-2005 band 10 (Kunnskapsforlaget, Oslo, Norway).
{{DEFAULTSORT:Aamot, Rolf
20th-century Norwegian painters
21st-century Norwegian painters
Norwegian male painters
21st-century Norwegian male artists
Norwegian photographers
Dramatiska Institutet alumni
Norwegian film directors
1934 births
Living people
Artists from Bergen
20th-century Norwegian male artists