LEONARD RICKHARD

Description

Leonard Rickhard is an outstanding representative of contemporary art in Norway. This publication presents a comprehensive selection of his most important and significant paintings from the 1970s to the present day, enhanced by a selection of sketches.

Leonhard Rickhard (b. 1945) is one of the most significant representatives of Norwegian contemporary art. Owing to his unique vision and narrative techniques, he has revitalised painting as a means of artistic expression. In his paintings, which can be termed as conceptual, he portrays a fragmented and often enigmatic reality, inviting the viewer to discover and reconstruct his pictorial narrative.

Rickhard’s pictorial universe of motifs and figures can be traced back to the nineteen-seventies: birch forests, building sites and heaps of machinery are combined in a precisely calculated perspective with finely detailed depictions of machine parts and fragments of models. His narrative picture sequences are often populated by melancholy and contemplative human figures.

Over the past forty years, Rickhard has constantly questioned, challenged and recontextualised this pictorial universe. His artistic works occupy a unique position in Norwegian art, precisely because of their uncompromising reworking of recurring motifs. His paintings appear as solid and monumental constructions, which at the same time reveal a fundamental complexity, restlessness and vulnerability. The combination of conceptual strategies and formal aspects is one of the most significant strengths of his artistic oeuvre in the variegated field of contemporary art.

PRESS COMMENTS

”Prestisjefull bok – Både boken og utstillingen bidrartil kanoniseringen av et unikt kunstnerskap, og forhåpentlig også styrke billedkunstens og kunstbokens stilling i Norge.”, Lotte Sandberg, Aftenposten, 17.11.2012

”Tett på traumene”, Harald Flor, Dagbladet, 19.11.2012

”Maleriets tungvekter i bokform”, Tone Sandberg, Foedrelandsvennen, 15.11.2012