In 2002, visual artist Kirsten Dufour (b. 1941) started the video archive Let Us Speak Now : a work of art and a video archive about feminism, activism, and art production. The archive contains more than 80 interviews with international feminist artists whom Dufour sought out during her travels and work stays, particularly in the United States. The archive presents an oral history of the feminist art movement from the 1970s until 2007, when some of the last interviews were conducted.
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The Danish artist Olivia Holm-Møller (1875–1970) practised as a sculptor, graphic artist and painter and is known especially for her expressive and colourful visual expression with cosmic and symbolic imagery. Her letter archive covers a period of about 70 years, which makes the correspondence an essential source of insight into Holm-Møller’s work. With few exceptions, the archive consists of Holm-Møller’s letters to others, which means that we can gain insight into her artistic practice and thinking through the artist’s own words.
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The South African artist Ernest Mancoba (1904-2002) was a central figure in international modernism, and his unique fusion of European modernism with African forms and ideas sets him apart. Born in South Africa, he arrived in Paris in 1938, where he met a group of Danish artists who became lifelong friends, including the painter and sculptor Sonja Ferlov Mancoba (1911-1984), whom he married in 1942. His correspondence and notebooks provide crucial insight into his aesthetic standpoint, network, and life path, as well as the history of his exhibitions and institutional recognition.
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The sculptor Kai Nielsen (1882-1924) achieved great popularity in the 1910s and 20s, both with his statuettes and with larger works for public settings. Nielsen's almost explosive activity gave rise to a rich network, as evidenced by his correspondence. A small part of the collections of Kai Nielsen's letters at the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek have been made public in connection with the museum's special exhibition in 2024.
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Danish sculptor Sonja Ferlov Mancoba (1911–1984) is a central figure in Danish modernist art. During the 1930s she belonged to the surrealist artist group associated with the journal Linien (The Line). After the Second World War, she was a part of the exhibition partnerships Høst (Harvest) and Cobra. She spent most of her life in Paris where she lived with her life partner and fellow artist Ernest Mancoba and their son, Wonga. Her correspondence is an important source of insight into her aesthetic position as well as well as her exhibition history and the institutionalization of her art.
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From late 1958 to early 1963, Arthur (Addi) Køpcke and his wife, Tut, owned and operated a gallery in Copenhagen. Initially, the gallery mainly presented informal art, later the emphasis shifted to neorealism and Fluxus. The gallery attracted attention, mainly from artists, but also from galleries outside Denmark, as demonstrated by letters and other materials in the Arthur Køpcke Archive at the ARoS art museum in Aarhus. The archive has now been digitized and made accessible to the public.
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The visual artist and art theorist Vilhelm Bjerke-Petersen (1909–1957) was a key figure in Danish surrealism – with exceptionally close connections to the contemporary international art scene. This collection of sources positions Bjerke-Petersen in the inner circle of the European surrealist movement. The archive contains letters from André Breton, Paul Éluard, Roland Penrose, Joan Miró, Marcel Duchamp, Hans Arp, Sophie Taeuber-Arp and many other prominent artists and art theorists from the 1930s until the years following the Second World War.
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Baroness Christine Stampe (1797–1868) was one of the most significant figures during Bertel Thorvaldsen’s (1770–1844) final years. Her written recollections of the sculptor were published in an edited version in 1912, while the original manuscript has been kept under seal at the Thorvaldsens Museum. The now published manuscript includes detailed notes on Thorvaldsen’s production and events in his life and contributes to our knowledge of his extensive national and international network.
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Albert Mertz (1920–1990) left behind one of the most interesting oeuvres in Danish art history. His work is a constant investigation of art and, not least, how art relates to reality. He was forever experimenting, doubting and querying, always asking the question ‘what is art?’. He pursued his artistic thought or idea, expressing it across media, from painting, drawing and collage to sculpture and film. Throughout his life he was also a significant voice in the art world, expressing himself in numerous articles and texts, and he stayed abreast of developments both in Denmark and abroad.
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In the music world, the composer Henning Christiansen (1932–2008) is best known as one of the leading figures in the ‘New Simplicity’ of the 1960s and the Neo-Romanticism of the 1970s, but he was at least equally important to the Danish cultural scene as a link between representative of different art forms – visual art, literature, theatre, film and so forth – and as a link between Denmark and the rest of Europe. By exploring his archive, readers can get close to his contacts, including Danish experimental artists, the circle around the German artist Joseph Beuys and socially committed artists, film makers and TV producers during the 1970s.
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With his pluralistic style and diverse oeuvre, J.F. Willumsen (1863–1958) is a singular figure in Danish art. He was a prolific letter writer, as evidenced by his expansive letter archive at Willumsen’s Museum. His correspondence with colleagues and critics reveals how Willumsen’s works, personality and knowledge of art caused both admiration and shock among his contemporaries, both in Denmark and abroad.
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In 1825, the Kunstforeningen (the Art Association, now Kunstforeningen GL STRAND) was founded by High War Commissioner Johan Christian Fick together with J.L. Lund, C.W. Eckersberg and G.F. Hetsch – all three professors at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts – landscape artist J.P. Møller, art historian N.L. Høyen and secretary J.M. Thiele. Over the following years, the association became an important forum for Danish art via commissions, raffles and, not least, exhibitions.
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The journal Klingen (The Blade), which came out in 1917–1920 with the visual artist Axel Salto as the key actor, is one of the richest and most vibrant Danish cultural magazines. It is diverse, open-minded and sharply polemic, and the content was shaped in a dialogue with everything that was happening in the contemporary art world and debate, which existed in a highly turbulent climate during these early years of modernism. The magazine developed continuously, which makes the correspondence concerning the editorial process a fascinating read.
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Martinus Rørbye (1803–1848) was the great globetrotter among the artists of the Danish Golden Age. Restlessness and a thirst for adventure drove Rørbye to explore not only Norway, Germany, the Netherlands and Italy but even such far-flung places as Greece and Constantinople. On his travels, journal keeping was a fixed ritual, and the preserved journals are the most complete source of a Danish artist’s study tour during the first half of the 19th century.
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Emil Hannover (1863–1923) was the first director of The Hirschsprung Collection as well as one of the leading art critics around 1900. The many types of networks related to his position as a museum professional, an art critic and a prolific author are represented in his archive, which includes some 6,500 letters, covering some 825 letter writers.
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The museums in Faaborg and Kerteminde possess the most important collections of letters and journals from the so-called Funen Painters, with Peter Hansen, Johannes and Alhed Larsen, Fritz and Anna Syberg and Jens Birkholm as the most central figures. The material sheds light on the artists’ personal life, their artistic work and the establishment of a museum dedicated to their work.
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During the 19th century, the Skovgaard family fostered some of the best-known artists in the country, including P.C. Skovgaard and his children, Joakim, Niels and Susette. The Skovgaard Archive at the Skovgaard Museum contains more than 5,000 letters to and from the members of the Skovgaard family and paints a fascinating picture of the family’s central role and importance for the Danish art scene at the time.
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The painter Elisabeth Jerichau Baumann (1819–1881) was a unique figure in the so-called Golden Age of Danish art, but she struggled to be accepted by the Danish art world and thus, from an early time, turned her gaze to London, the metropolis of the international art world. The artist’s own words paint a nuanced portrait of Baumann as the dynamic cosmopolitan who challenged the artist’s conventional role.
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From 1842 until his death in 1848, Johan Thomas Lundbye kept a journal, not as a way of memorializing mundane everyday events but rather as a place to gather his reflections on the artist’s place in the world, faith, destiny, art and love. The journals are an important source in Danish art history, which are now published in their entirety for the first time.
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