Odd Nerdrum

(Norwegian, born 1944)

Odd Nerdrum is a contemporary Norwegian painter known for his dogged commitment to the traditional techniques of painters like Caravaggio, Titian, and Rembrandt. His chiaroscuro portraits and figurative Judeo-Christian scenes have a theatrical quality akin to, but without the irony of, John Currin’s paintings. Nerdrum qualifies his practice as kitsch, a self-described philosophy, separate from contemporary art, which blends historical painting techniques with emotional imagery and narratives. “Contemporary art is based on [the idea] that an artist is supposed to go into art history in the same way as an art historian. When the artist produces something, he or she relates to it with the eye of an art historian or critic,” Nerdrum’s said. “I have the feeling that when I am working it is more like working with a soap opera or glamour. It is emotional and not art criticism or the history of art.” Born on April 8, 1944 in Helsingborg, Sweden, his childhood was rife with turmoil, his unstable parents divorcing and then orphaning the artist and his brother. He went on to attend the Art Academy of Oslo followed by a period of time studying under the famed Conceptual artist Joseph Beuys at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. Over the course of his career, Nerdrum's work has been met with both scorn and praise from critics. In 2011, Nerdrum’s difficulties with the Norwegian government began, he was convicted of tax evasion in 2012 and sentenced to 34 months in prison. His paintings are held in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the de Young Museum in San Francisco, and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C.