Over de kunstenaar

Carl-Henning Pedersen was born 23 September 1913 in Copenhagen. He was raised in the poor area of Vigerslev Alle and had radical political beliefs. Pedersen was a Danish painter and key member of the COBRA movement. He was known as the “Scandinavian” Chagall and is considered one of the leading Danish artists of the late 20th century.

He joined the International Folk High School in Elsinore in 1933, where he met self-taught painter Else Alfelt. They married in 1934, and their first daughter, Vibeke Alfelt, was born later that year. Alfelt encouraged Pedersen to paint, and he first exhibited at the Artists' Autumn Exhibition (Kunstnernes Efterårsudstilling) in Copenhagen in 1936.

Pedersen achieved wide acclaim especially for his early imaginative and colourful drawings and made an innovative contribution to modern art. His drawings also left a big impression on his CoBrA friends: Karel Appel, Constant and Corneille were all inspired in their early artistic careers by Pedersen’s marvelous fantasy world on paper.
The artist created a colourful, strange fairytale world on paper, populated by giant birds, golden ships, amazing starry skies, horses and creatures of every conceivable form and type. These were all drawn and painted with oil pastels, watercolour, gouache, pen and ink. Small wonder that in his own country Pedersen was seen as the Hans Christian Andersen of the Danish painting world. Both children and adults will gain much pleasure from Pedersen’s cheerful and lively drawings. His abstract works, with flat planes of colour, emulated the works of cubists and of Paul Klee.

Pedersen won the Eckersberg Award in 1950 and the Guggenheim Award in 1958. A retrospective was put on at the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh in 1961, and he was Denmark's representative at the Venice Biennale in 1962. He won the Thorvaldsen Medal in 1963.

Pedersen died on 20 February 2007 in Copenhagen, after a long illness. He was survived by his second wife, Sidsel Ramson.
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