May 31, 2018 - primo 2020
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SANS OG SAMLING is the headline for four
temporary exhibitions celebrating the 70th
anniversary of the Cobra movement in 2018.
BETWEEN HEAVEN AND EARTH sheds light
on Carl-Henning Pedersen's painstaking
preparations for his redecoration of Denmark's
earliest Cathedral in the 1980s.
The temporary exhibition BETWEEN HEAVEN AND EARTH is filled with Carl-Henning Pedersen's sketches for his redecoration of Ribe Cathedral, 1983-87.
The Cathedral, built in 1225, is the most ancient of its kind in Denmark. In the late 1980s, when the Cathedral apse was due for redecoration, the choice of the abstract painter Carl-Henning Pedersen for the monumental task caused a great controversy in the Danish media - perhaps due to the ancient history of the Cathedral.
Many believed that Carl-Henning Pedersen's art was too esoteric and of too private a nature for a public building such as the Cathedral. The freethinking and secular character of his motives represents a marked departure from traditonal Danish church decorations, and opinions on his Ribe decoration still differ today.
BETWEEN HEAVEN AND EARTH documents that he came well-prepared for the task: More than 100 drafts for the final Cathedral decoration have been preserved. Still, true to the artist's credo of artistic spontaneity, it was only while carrying out the actual church decoration that his vision took shape.
After his death in 2007, Carl-Henning Pedersen left a diary containing his thoughts and concerns during the time of the Ribe decoration. "A church painter I will never be", he exclaims in the diary - but the diary as well as the final work of art bear witness to the inspiration he felt while working on the murals.
THE EXHIBITION IS SUPPORTED BY
Knud Højgaards Fond | Helle Mau Jensen og Døtres Almennyttige Fond | 15. Juni Fonden | Augustinus Fonden | Toyota Fonden
Beckett-Fonden | A.P. Møller og Hustru Chastine Mc-Kinney Møllers Fond til Almene Formaal | Spar Nord Fonden
Herning Kommune | Buddha Board | Per Nørhaven | Bestseller Retail Europe A/S | Nygård Ølby | Carl-Henning Pedersens Fond
Aage og Johanne Louis-Hansens Fond | Ege Tæpper | Midtjydsk Skole- og Kulturfond | Lysgaard Fonden