| Offbeat | Cobra | Artists

Erik Ortvad debuted 18 years old at the Exhibition of Autumn in 1935, but his talent was already recognised years before. His style at this time was surrealism inspired mainly by Dali and Wilhelm Freddie. Less surrealistic sources of inspiration was Miro, Klee, Kandinsky and Richard Mortensen.

In the end of the thirties Ortvad got in contact with the group of artists that later was to publis the magazine Helhesten.

Slowly Ortvad started painting in the less surrealistic and more spontanious abstract way that characterised these artists. For the next ten years Ortvad painted a long row of beatiful abstract poetic and almost organic softly colored canvases, inspired by the Scandinavian nature.

In 1948 he joined Cobra with this abstract expressions. Post-Cobra Ortvad stopped painting for a period, and from the mid-fifthies until the mid-sixties he received international acknowledgement because of his satiric black and white drawings (signed Enrico) published in many newspapers around Europe. Later he started painting again, firstly in a very stilistic form, since in a more sketchy and poetic abstract style.


		Erik Ortvad (1917)

						Erik Ortvad debuted 18 years old at the Exhibition of Autumn in 1935, but his talent was already recognised years before. His style at this time was surrealism inspired mainly by Dali and Wilhelm Freddie. Less surrealistic sources of inspiration was Miro, Klee, Kandinsky and Richard Mortensen. In the end of the thirties Ortvad got in contact with the group of artists that later was to publis the magazine Helhesten. Slowly Ortvad started painting in the less surrealistic and more spontanious abstract way that characterised these artists. For the next ten years Ortvad painted a long row of beatiful abstract poetic and almost organic softly colored canvases, inspired by the Scandinavian nature. In 1948 he joined Cobra with this abstract expressions. Post-Cobra Ortvad stopped painting for a period, and from the mid-fifthies until the mid-sixties he received international acknowledgement because of his satiric black and white drawings (signed Enrico) published in many newspapers around Europe. Later he started painting again, firstly in a very stilistic form, since in a more sketchy and poetic abstract style.

		© Copyright 2002, Thomas Faerber & Jette Hussmann.