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Dimensions: 200 by 130cm., 78¾ by 51¼in.

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Provenance: Michael Werner Collection, 1995

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Exhibited:

Trondheim, Kunstmuseum; Bergen, Kunstforening; Barcelona, Palau Reial de Pedralbes (Kongelige Palasset); Madrid, Centro Cultural del Conde Duque; Zaragoza, Iber, Caja Bank Foundation; Logrono, Iber, Caja Bank Foundation; Oslo, Kommunes Kunstsamlinger, Stenersenmuseet, Per Kirkeby (travelling exhibition), 1999-2000

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Notes: PROPERTY OF A NORWEGIAN PRIVATE COLLECTOR
Per Kirkeby follows in the tradition of Nineteenth Century artists who sought to capture the mysticism of the Nordic terrain. Kirkeby, a luminary in his native Denmark, has created abstract works whose elegiac beauty is imbued with a visceral memory of the landscape. As with Holz III, their surface has the dense light absorbing quality of hard natural rock that on close inspection yields up surprising hues of brilliant colour, jagged lines of strata and thick plates of pigment enlivened by bold and textured brush strokes. The process of Kirkeby's painting is a painterly act of layering, of depositing onto the surface of the canvas histories of paint that will be superseded by a further memory of colour and texture. The method remembers the way in which the land records itself, the way in which time turns landscape from that which was living and supple to that which is hard, crystalline and ancient. Prior to entering the Eksperimenterende Kunst-skole (Experimental Art School) in 1962, Kirkeby had begun a degree in Geology at the University of Copenhagen from which he graduated in 1964 and between 1958 and 1972 he was in Greenland undertaking geological work. Kirkeby has reflected, 'When I paint a picture the actual process of painting reminds me, in many respects, of the processes which took place, over a very long period of time, when the world and its landscapes were first being created' (quoted by David Galloway, 'Painted Landscape that Absorb Geology', International Herald Tribune, New York, March 6, 1999).

In its palimpsest of earthy memory this painting captures the passing of time and in so doing is effected with an innately human awareness of transition and recollection. Our knowledge and sense of ourselves is reliant upon a depository of historical events and thoughts. We are an accumulation of narratives and Kirkeby's Holz III meditates this existential angst. Great landscape paintings, such as those by Caspar David Friedrich, have often been haunted by the human condition. Yet though its form and philosophy circle in abstraction, Holz III through its materiality, remains a painting that never ceases to return to what it first references, the Northern landscape, bruised with colour, heavy with stone and earth, empty and resonant with the indefinite pitch of time.