MODERN ART + DESIGN - Bruun Rasmussen

606 CD
ANTON HANSEN
b. Vedskølle, Herfølge 1891, d. 1960
"Gasværkshavnen" (The Gas Works Harbour), c. 1918-20. Signed Anton
Hansen. Oil on canvas. 90 x 90 cm.
Literature: Ekstra Bladet, September 3, 1918. Drawing with similar motive ill. under
the headline "Kullene" (The Charcoal) and with a verse signed 'Jacob Ærlig'.
Literature: Hanne Abildgaard: "Anton Hansen - Mellemkrigstidens sorte satiriker",
Copenhagen 2001, ill. p. 298.
Literature: Mikael Wivel: "Dansk kunst i det 20. århundrede", Copenhagen 2008,
ill. and mentioned p. 372-373.
Provenance: Carl Clausen's collection, his auction at Odd Fellow Palæet, Copenhagen,
October 1930, cat. no. 38. DKK 75,000-100,000 / € 10,000-13,500
The work “Gasværkshavnen” (The Gas Works Harbour) is one of the few known
examples of Anton Hansen’s painterly contribution to early Danish modernism.
Hansen was on the periphery of the modernist art scene, which was particularly
dynamic and experimental in and around 1918. He exhibited at the Artists’ Autumn
Exhibition (KE) in 1918, at which Vilhelm Lundstrøm’s “Pakkassebilleder”
(packing box pictures) derived success from scandal, and knew artists such as
Olaf Rude, Jais Nielsen and William Scharff, whose cubist experiments he admired.
A painting such as “Gasværkshavnen” stands out from the work of his
peers, primarily through its social indignation, but Hansen seemed to have neither
the urge nor the encouragement to continue along the path of painting.
Of Anton Hansen’s works in relation to the other modernists at the Artists’ Autumn
Exhibition in 1918, Mikael Wivel writes: “(...) The style may have been related,
but it had far more substance. The figuration was naive, the simplification
cubist and the dynamics expressionist - not to mention futuristic. In this respect,
a painting such as “Havnen” (the work up for auction here) is extremely characteristic
of his efforts (...). It is dynamically constructed as a sort of painted
collage that gradually comes together to tell the story of the toil underlying the
energy which ensures that the wheels can rotate and the sparks fly. Hansen gets
right down to the basic forces in society, and he displays them with both humour
and passion, but also with a certain expressive naivety verging on Robert Storm
Petersens”.
18 BRUUN RASMUSSEN BREDGADE AUCTION 831