Colourful Landscapes

Colourful Landscapes
Niels Larsen Stevns & Signe Klejs

The landscape painter Niels Larsen Stevns is the theme for this exhibition which unfolds the artist’s colourful landscape paintings for the first time.

Niels Larsen Stevns (1864-1941) is best known for his biblical and historical paintings. This is despite the fact that throughout his life, year after year and summer after summer, he painted in the open air, and the majority of his work, therefore, consists of landscape paintings.

In the landscapes, Stevns combined his view of nature as God-created with an innovative modernist idiom. Using bold brushstrokes, distinctive colours, and especially light, Stevns created vibrant and illuminated landscapes that make a unique contribution to the Danish landscape tradition.

He found his motifs on travels at home and abroad, and the different locations are emphasised in the exhibition, which, over two floors, presents a wide range of artworks from Vendsyssel Museum of Art’s large collection as well as loans from museums, institutions and private owners across the country.

Niels Larsen Stevns’ play of light and colour also forms the basis for a site-specific installation created by the contemporary artist Signe Klejs (b. 1974). The installation is based on the landscape of Vendsyssel, especially the characteristic coastal landscapes. Inspired by Stevns’ shapes and colours, his keen observation of nature and his special ability to capture the changeability of landscape and light, Signe Klejs has created a sensuous three-dimensional landscape painting out of sand that is set in motion by small engines and thus changes throughout the exhibition period.

The exhibition and catalogue have been supported by: The Augustinus Foundation, Beckett-Fonden, Knud Højgaards Fond, Lemvigh-Müller Fonden, The New Carlsberg Foundation og Aage og Johanne Louis-Hansens Fond.