BRUNSWICK — The Bowdoin College Museum of Art will bring to New England the first American retrospective of one of Europe’s most distinguished contemporary painters, Danish artist Per Kirkeby (b. 1938). Deeply engrossed in natural history and art history, Kirkeby is a painter, sculptor, geologist, filmmaker and writer who has enjoyed a prolific 40-year career. The most comprehensive display of his work in the U.S. to date, Per Kirkeby: Paintings and Sculpture presents works from American and European collections and features 26 paintings, several of which are large scale, and 11 bronze sculptures that span all phases of Kirkeby’s artistic development.

Kirkeby’s art does not fit into a single style or movement; he believes that art, like science, is constantly in flux. His works incorporate all aspects of natural history, from the progression of humanity to the scientific evolution of the world, reflecting the artist’s considerable curiosity about the infinite variety of life.

Kirkeby’s deep affinity for Danish romantic naturalism and his scientific training are evident in his paintings that merge the beauty of landscape painting and the grandeur of history painting. Through his energetic brushwork and expressive color combinations, his paintings — some over six feet tall — develop a structure that evokes erosion and geological strata.

The exhibition includes several of Kirkeby’s square blackboards (chalk drawings on Masonite) from the 1980s. Because the Masonite drawings can be erased with a sponge — and early on frequently were — Kirkeby used them to sketch and experiment. The process of erasure reflects his belief that nothing is permanent.

In the early 1980s, Kirkeby began creating sculpted plaster forms cast in bronze, mostly working outdoors during the summer on the remote Danish island of Laesoe, home to many major 19th-century Danish landscape painters. The dense bronze sculptures evoke fragmented bodies — arms, legs or heads, that appear to be melting together or falling apart. Kirkeby reworks the limbs into organic forms that vaguely suggest figures, reminiscent of Auguste Rodin. Some of his small experimental bronze models resemble architectural forms and echo the construction of his paintings.

The museum is open to the public free of charge 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday; Thursday evenings until 8:30 p.m.; and 1-5 p.m. Sunday. For more information, visit bowdoin.edu/art-museum.

Programming

The following events are all open to the public free of charge:

Thursday, April 4, 2013

Dr. Klaus Ottmann will deliver the opening lecture, Per Kirkeby: Subjective Thinker, Anti-Artist, Historical Thinker at 4:30 p.m. in Kresge Auditorium at Bowdoin College. The lecture will introduce themes and processes that characterize the work of Per Kirkeby.

Immediately following the lecture, an Open House at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art from 5:30 to 7:30 will take place.

Tuesday, April 9, 2013 at 7:00 p.m. in the Bowdoin College Museum of Art

Gallery talk: Arts and Sciences in Conversation by Bowdoin faculty Jim Mullen, associate professor of art; Collin Roesler, associate professor of earth and oceanographic science; and Mary Lou Zeeman, R. Wells Johnson Professor of Mathematics. This interdisciplinary dialogue will focus on generating compelling synergies between the arts andsciences and will include discussion of Per Kirkeby: Painting and Sculpture and the companion exhibition, Sense of Scale, Measure of Color: Art, Science and Mathematics of Planet Earth.

Thursday, April 18, 2013 at 7:00 p.m. in Smith Auditorium at Bowdoin College

In a major lecture, Per Kirkeby’s Heavy Metal, Sarah K. Rich, Associate Professor of Art History, Penn State University, will speak on Per Kirkeby’s bronze sculptures, an important yet understudied dimension of his creative practice. Rich specializes in art produced in the United States and France during the 1950s and 1960s. Her current book project is titled “Past Flat: Other Sides to American Abstraction in the Cold War.”

Thursday, May 2, 2013 at 7:00 p.m. in the Bowdoin College Museum of Art

A Dramatic Reading of Texts by Per Kirkeby by Bowdoin College students in front of works in the exhibition. In addition to his work as a painter and sculptor, Per Kirkeby is also an accomplished writer, whose texts can be meditative, acerbic, biographical, and poetic. This program will present his writings in relation to his artworks.

About the Artist

Kirkeby lives and works in Copenhagen and Læsø, Denmark, and Arnasco, a small town near Genoa, Italy. He has received many prestigious awards including the Ars Fennica Award of the Henna and Pertti Niemistö Art Foundation (1993); the Coutts Contemporary Art Foundation Award (1996); and the Herbert-Boeckl-Preis for his life’s work (2003). Major retrospectives of his work were held at the Tate Modern, London (2009) and the Museum Kunst Palast in Düsseldorf, Germany (2010). His work is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Museum of Modern Art, New York; and the Centre Pompidou, Paris. Kirkeby has taught at the Art Academy, Karlsruhe; the Hochschule der Künste, Berlin; and the Städelschule, Frankfurt am Main.

In addition to his work in painting and sculpture, Kirkeby is also a prolific filmmaker and writer. He has made more than 20 short films and full-length features that also address art and natural history. Kirkeby has published more than 70 books of poetry, essays, and novels. His books on individual artists that he admires include Eugene Delacroix, Paul Gauguin, El Greco, and Vincent van Gogh, as well as Scandinavian artists. Not traditional monographs, his books are poetic reflections on the artists’ work.

Exhibition Catalogue and Organization

The 144-page exhibition catalogue, published by The Phillips Collectionand Yale University Press, includes an essay by Klaus Ottmann and an interview with the artist by Dorothy Kosinski, as well as color reproductions of Kirkeby’s art.

Per Kirkeby: Paintings and Sculpture is organized by The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C. The exhibition and programming at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art are proudly sponsored by The Danish Arts Council, Coco Kim and Richard Schetman, P’13,and Bowdoin College.

Sense of Scale, Measure of Color: Art, Science and Mathematics of Planet Earth is organized in collaboration with Bowdoin College faculty Collin Roesler, Chair, Earth andOceanographic Science, Emily Peterman, assistant professor of earth and oceanographic science, and Mary Lou Zeeman, R. Wells Johnson Professor of Mathematics.