4.12 2005 - 29.1 2006

The ability to calm oneself and to observe is one of the preconditions for visual art, both for those who paint and those who view. The speed and sharpness of human vision is both a blessing and a curse for art. Because what does it mean really to observe? Is it to be like the realist seeking reality, or as the mystic who strives to trace what not all others can detect?

The collections of the Nordic Watercolour Museum contain more than 400 works by artists active throughout the Nordic countries and purchased over the past five years. Important acquisitions are made in connection with major one-man exhibitions. This winter’s selection from the museum’s collections presents the work of artists with landscape as their theme.

Free admission

SILVIA BÄCHLI, Switzerland

5.2 – 26.3 2006

It is a rare opportunity to be able to introduce the first separate exhibition of Silvia Bächli in Sweden. She works primarily on paper and is one of the most significant Swiss artists working in the medium today. She makes both large and small watercolour drawings that she works with in groups or series. Her works are basically representational but every line or form is simplified and fragmented in expression. There is an extraordinary power in each of her separate works which creates a flowing movement when you see them together. Her works carry an underlying tone that can be playful and scary - almost helpless - suggesting the vulnerability of all living existence.
Silvia Bächli (born 1956) lives and works in Basel and Paris. She has been professor at the Art Academy in Karlsruhe in Germany since 1993.

TROELS WÖRSEL, Denmark

2.4 – 21.5 2006

Troels Wörsel (born 1950) is first and foremost a painter – experimentation and exploration of the flat surface is central to his art. He incorporates in his painting fragments and texts from the reality around him where they take on their own expression on the two-dimensional surface. Works on paper have always
been an integral part of his artistic expression, permitting different technical possibilities than the actual painting – a feature which fascinates him. His works look complex in content but are light, spontaneous and very direct in expression with numerous references to other artists. Although Troels Wørsel is
one of Denmark’s most fascinating painters of his generation he has always been an “outsider” in his personal approach to painting. This is his first separate exhibition in Sweden and the
majority of the watercolours are painted especially for the museum. Troels Wørsel lives and works in Cologne in Germany
and Pietrasanta in Italy.
Troels Wørsel will represent Denmark at the Venice

OSKAR KOKOSCHKA, Austria

4.6 – 27.8 2006

Observing and understanding people fascinated the artist Oskar Kokoschka. He was born in 1886 in Austria and had a long and eventful life at the very heart of modern European history.
At an early age Kokoschka trained as art craftsman, working in the sinuous style of Art Nouveau. But he soon sought out the company of the avant-garde and the group clustering at the Café Central in Vienna. The city was a meeting point for researchers, artists, musicians and writers of many nationalities. Freud and Wittgenstein were two who shared in the life of the city. Adolf Loos, the architect, assumed the role of Kokoschka’s patron and protector, and his art colleagues included Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele.
Kokoschka became the group’s leading portrait painter and depicted in almost revolutionary fashion his sitters’ emotional lives, expressed through his restless and slightly nervous brushwork.
The urge to challenge conventions and hypocrisy was powerful, and the artists abandoned strivings after harmony and the ideal in favour of expressing strong, true emotion in brushwork and colour. In this summer’s exhibition visitors will meet a unique selection of Kokoschkas watercolours painted during his formative years in Vienna, Berlin and Dresden. The works
are loaned from museums and private collections.

GUNNLAUGUR SCHEVING, Iceland

4.12 2005 - 29.1 2006

Gunnlaugur Scheving (1904-1972) is one of Iceland’s most prominent figurative painters. He was part of a movement of artists appearing in the 1930s and which broke with the landscape tradition of the early century. Instead he devel-oped a very personal and distinctive language and pictorial style. He began to explore themes relating to man and his environment, fishermen at sea and fantasy paintings of figures set in ru-ral surroundings. All 64 works in the exhibition are loaned from the National Gallery of Iceland, which owns the most important collection of Scheving’s works.