Rita Kernn-Larsen (1904-98) was a Danish Surrealist painter, whom Peggy Guggenheim met in Paris in 1937 and invited to exhibit at her Guggenheim Jeune gallery in London the following year. This show initiated Guggenheim’s patronage of Surrealism.
The current exhibition inaugurates two new exhibition rooms at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection.
Kernn-Larsen played a noteworthy part in the Surrealist movement, both in Denmark and internationally. She trained with Fernand Léger in Paris the early 1930s, distinguishing herself as his star pupil.
Searching For the Moon, 1936-37, Oil on canvas
In the Surrealist vein, Krenn-Larsen merged memories rooted in real-life experiences with dream and imagination, derived from an automatic painting method generating a stream of images from within the unconscious. Her works reflect the Surrealist desire to bridge any possible boundaries or alternative states, be they the human and the natural, dream and reality, the conscious and unconscious. A central motif in her paintings were the femme-arbres, women as arboreal creatures, which allude to the Surrealist’s identification of the female artist with the fertile natural world.
Behind the Mirror, 1937, Oil and sand on vancas
In her later years, Kernn-Larsen moved away from Surrealism towards an art based on both abstraction and nature. Her paintings were selected by the art historian Arturo Schwarz for the 1986 Venice Biennale. This exhibition marks her return to the city after more that thirty years.
The Apple From Normandy / The Apple
1934
Oil on canvas
This is one Kernn-Larsen’s earliest Surrealist paintings. It develops its biomorphic shape through an automatic technique, championed by the Surrealists, in which the subconscious freely directs the hand in tracing the line on the surface.
She explained: “I start with something realistic and its continuation is taken care of by the unconscious. The result often surprises me… there is as such a certain connection to the ‘psychoanalytic’.”
Phantoms
1934
Oil on canvas
Phantoms originated with a drowning accident that Krenn-Larsen and her husband witnessed on vacation in Normandy at a bathing resort in late summer 1934. ” It was uncanny… two [people] went missing… I don’t think they were ever found. It made a deep impression on me,” she recalled.
Dance and Counter-dance
1936
Oil on canvas
Kernn-Larsen’s works combined memories, dreams and imagination, as the employed an automatic Surrealist painting method to generate a flow of images arising from the unconscious. This is a signature example. The artist explained, “two rhythms play against each other. I consider it to be one of my most successful pictures.”
Self-Portrait (Know Thyself)
1937
Oil on canvas
The automatic line in this self-portrait evolves from Kernn-Larsen’s personal features. She explained: “I have taken off the shoes because I had to step into the glass.”
The Women’s Uprising
1940
Oil on canvas
The self-identification with fertile nature was frequent in Kernn-Larsen’s work. Seeing nature as female, Surrealist woman artist found in its abundant growth a metaphor for their artistic creation. Here, Kernn-Larsen developed the motif of the femme-arbres, women as arboreal figures, with their growing, sprouting branches.
