artist
Elsa Nielsen
- Denmark, 1923–2011
Elsa Nielsen worked in drawing, graphic design and painting. There is something timeless about her art. She depicted motifs from her home environment and its surroundings in a direct and honest way. Still lifes with vases, studies from a live model, flower drawings and portraits belong to her motif circle. In a watercolour painting from 1951, she has depicted her husband, the artist Palle Nielsen, in profile with eyes closed and head bowed. Under the watercolour, the thin, sketchy pencil lines can be seen, laying the foundation for the distinctive and characteristic portrait. In later years, she also drew inspiration from classical art and made her own reinterpretations, paraphrases, of well-known works from art history. Elsa Nielsen received her artistic education first at the Glyptoteket, where she took private lessons for the artist Viggo Brandt, then at Erik Clemmesen’s Art School and then at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen.