Lot 28: Interiör med to kvinner (Interior with two women)

Ludvig Karsten (Norwegian, 1876-1926) Interiör med to kvinner (Interior with two women) signed and dated 'Karsten/-14' (upper left) oil on canvas 14½ x 18 7/8 in. (37.5 x 48 cm.) Painted in Autumn 1914 Winter 1915

Oslo, Kunstforening, Ludvig Karsten, 1956, no. 23a.

Mr. Georg Moerch, Norway.
Anonymous sale, Tore Ulving Kunst - Auksjoner, 10 December 1996. Acquired at the above sale by the present owner.

VAT rate of 5% is payable on hammer price and at 17.5% on the buyer's premium.
'[Ludvig] Karsten is in the fullest sense a modern painter, more than any other Norwegian painter, even including Edvard Munch...By being 'modern' in art means, or should mean, that one is to the highest degree a child of his time and its conditions, in such a way that he can understand it and feel its pulse not just in art but in other areas as well'. (C. Krohg, 'De seks', Kunst og Kultur, Bergen, 1911, pp. 219-32).

Turning his back upon his formal academic training, Karsten carved out a name for himself as the primary representative for the new form of radical individualism. In this vein, it was Edvard Munch who had the most profound influence upon his artistic adolescence, inspiring him to paint mainly Nordic summer nights, illness and death, mirroring the themes found in his Norwegian master's work. This is nonetheless where the similarities between these two artists end. When Karsten moved to Paris in 1910 to work with Henri Matisse, he left the so-called narrative in his works behind and his expression became 'pure', positioning him among the French Post-Impressionists and the Fauvists. The young painter's intuitive desire to translate reality onto canvas with limited cerebral or philosophical input was not dampened under his new French master. While Matisse taught basic techniques to his students he emphatically encouraged them to not blindly copy his example but to develop their own individuality. Thus, Karsten freed himself from formal restraints, seeking to express, without fear of creative regimentation, his fresh, sensual, irrational flair. All of which Matisse commended highly.

Once again, the young Norwegian gained a reputation, this time as an excellent colourist. Seated in both the Impressionist and Expressionist camps, he married his intuitive desire to paint reality as the eye saw it with his subjective temperament before he could satisfactorily give his impetuous creative spirit his distinctive visual form. Interiör med to kvinner (Interior with two women) was painted during Karsten's stay back in Oslo, at his parental home at Slemdal in either the Autumn of 1914 or the Winter of 1915. The models for the work are his wife Misse (née Haslund) and one of his sisters who often sat for him. An intimate domestic scene, demure and quiet, is enlivened by Karsten's rapid brushstrokes which tone in the differing hues of reds, greens and blues, which all seem at first, difficult to ascertain in their constituent parts, but upon reflection form a beautiful and surprisingly complex composition.

Karsten played an important role in Norwegian art of the 20th century for having moved beyond the formal teachings of both Munch and Matisse, his art came to signify for future generations of Norwegian artists, a refuge from the norm, and a direct dialogue with life.