Hammershøi

The paintings by the Danish artist Vilhelm Hammershøi are associated more than anything else with a single location – the address no. 30 Strandgade, in the district of Christianshavn in Copenhagen. Hammershøi was born in 1864, and 2016 will be the centenary of his early death. Ordrupgaard wishes to mark this with ...a major exhibition that will for the first time focus on Hammershøi’s extensive production of works with motifs drawn from the apartment in Mikkel Vibes Gård, which in the decade from 1898 to 1909 not only formed the backdrop for the artist’s life and that of his wife Ida, but also provided the framework of and for his art – to such a degree that the artist Hammershøi and the address no. 30 Strandgade seem inextricably linked.

In recent decades, numerous exhibitions have established Hammershøi’s name, not only as one of the greatest ever Danish artists, but also as an artist with huge international potential. Ordrupgaard’s forward-thinking creator, the insurance director Wilhelm Hansen, was one of the first collectors of Hammershøi’s art.

The museum has continued Hansen’s commitment, and has been responsible for the majority of breakthrough exhibitions with the artist in recent decades at, for example, the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, the Guggenheim Museum in New York and the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona, and the museum has played an advisory role in connection with exhibitions at the Royal Academy in London and the Museum of Western Art in Tokyo – exhibitions that have secured Hammershøi an international breakthrough and provoked demands from international reviewers for the art history to be rewritten. Hammershøi has become well-known around the world and hailed as a painter of quiet rooms, and for the sensitive grey palette, so unusual in his day, that characterized everything he created – from portraits to landscapes and the striking architectural pictures, not to mention the numerous interior depictions, the complexity of which holds the key to a deeper understanding of his art.

Authors: Anne-Birgitte Fonsmark, Felix Krämer, Jacob Bach Riis, Kirsten Rykind-Eriksen
Publication year: 2016
Published by: Ordrupgaard
Language: English
Pages: 204
Dimensions: 24.5 x 28 cm