Press Office: Press Releases
Per Kirkeby
Wednesday 17 June – Sunday 6 September 2009
Admission £9.80 ( Concs £7.80 / Senior £8.80 / Family £24.50 concessions)
Opening hours: Sunday to Thursday, 10.00–18.00. Friday and Saturday, 10.00–22.00. Last admission into exhibitions 17.15 (Friday and Saturday 21.15).
Public information number: 020 7887 8888.
Public information URL: http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/perkirkeby/default.shtm
Press release: 17 March 2009
In June 2009, Tate Modern will present the first major survey in the UK of the work of the Danish artist Per Kirkeby (b. 1938).
The exhibition will explore the exceptional diversity of Kirkeby’s career spanning four decades. Focusing on key moments in
the artist’s oeuvre, it will bring together his Pop-inspired paintings from the 1960s with early paintings on canvas from
the late 1970s, an extensive group of blackboard works, sculptures and a selection of the monumental canvases for which Kirkeby
is best known.
Kirkeby has pursued an independent and unique artistic path over the past forty years. He rose to international prominence
in the early 1980s alongside the resurgence of a ‘new’ European painting or Neo-Expressionism which included artists such
as Georg Baselitz and A.R. Penck. The vigorous, gestural brushwork and beauty of his paintings, mostly untitled, and the sensuous
modelling of his black-patinated bronze sculptures, show him as an artist of rare material sensibility. While full of allusions
to landscape and veiled art-historical references, his large abstract paintings ultimately live their own reality.
Tate Modern’s survey will offer a long overdue opportunity for audiences to discover the work of this highly original artist. The show will feature 146 works including paintings on masonite and canvas, bronze sculptures and rarely-shown works on paper as well as a comprehensive selection of the artist’s extensive writings.
The exhibition will begin with an exploration of the recurring motif in Kirkeby’s work of the hut, the most basic form of
domestic architecture. Nature and landscape have been a continuous source of inspiration for Kirkeby, as has been the grand
tradition of European painting. The artist’s approach to art-making is informed by a near-scientific mode of enquiry which
can be traced back to his training as a geologist. One of the surprises of the show will be Kirkeby’s Pop-inspired paintings
on masonite from the 1960s, rarely seen outside his native Denmark. In addition, the exhibition will feature an extensive
selection of Kirkeby’s blackboards with his small-scale sculptures from the late 1970s to the present day. A room will also
be dedicated to Kirkeby’s prolific activity as a writer, revealing his reflections on his own art and that of others.
In the early 1980s Kirkeby substantially raised the stakes for his art by producing an heroic type of painting, an ambition
indicated not least by the large scale of his work from this period. Four of these heroic scaled works will create an impressive
painterly environment in the exhibition, inviting the audience to be immersed in these extraordinary paintings. Kirkeby’s
sumptuous paintings from the mid-1990s will be another highlight of the exhibition which will also include more recent works
not seen in the UK before.
Per Kirkeby (born 1938) is one of the most internationally acclaimed Danish artists working today. He completed a Masters
degree in arctic geology at the University of Copenhagen in 1964 before becoming involved with Copenhagen’s radical ExperimentalArtSchool
and international Fluxus. His polymath practice includes painting, drawing, work in various print-media, sculpture – both
in bronze and brick – writing and film. Per Kirkeby’s works are represented in many public collections including Tate, London;
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York, Centre Pompidou, Paris.
Per Kirkeby is curated by Dr Achim Borchardt-Hume, Curator, Modern and Contemporary Art, Tate Modern assisted by Cliff Lauson, Assistant
Curator, Tate Modern. The exhibition will travel to Museum Kunst Palast, Düsseldorf, 26 September 2009– 10 January 2010. A
fully illustrated catalogue accompanies the show.
For further information contact Bomi Odufunade/Oliver Krug, Tate Press Office, Millbank
London SW1P 4RG Call 020 7887 4942/8730 Fax 020 7887 8729, Email pressoffice@tate.org.uk
Visit www.tate.org.uk. To register for high-resolution images from Tate’s press image service visit http://www.tate.org.uk/about/pressoffice/pressimages
