Born in Denmark in 1938, Per Kirkeby gained renown as a leading figure in the New Painting movement of the 1980s, alongside artists such as Georg Baselitz and A.R. Penck. Kirkeby’s fervent excavation of art history across a range of styles and media reflect his training as a geologist. This lavishly illustrated book, the most comprehensive volume on Kirkeby ever published in English, traces the trajectory of an artistic career that has spanned half a century.
Beginning with Kirkeby’s early history paintings and moving through his engagement with Pop Art, sculpture, large-scale “heroic” paintings, and his pastoral “Walden” series of the 1990s, the book contrasts his monumental works with previously unpublished small-scale watercolors of Greenland landscapes, etchings, and the blackboards on which Kirkeby mapped out his ideas. With a newly commissioned essay by Richard Shiff, an interview with the artist conducted by curator Achim Borchardt-Hume, and a selection of Kirkeby’s own extensive writings, the book provides invaluable insight into the mind of an inimitable artist.
