Odd Nerdrum

Forum Gallery, New York and Los Angeles

New York, Forum Gallery, Odd Nerdrum: New Paintings, 2004

Odd Nerdrum, How We Cheat Each Other, 2009, illustrated on the front cover

Original canvas. This work is in overall very good condition, with rich colours and fine detail, and is ready to hang.
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The subject of the present work is a quintessential example of Nerdrum's large-scale allegories, presenting a sense of the apocalyptic. Portraying a time after our own civilisation, the figures wear timeless costumes: pelts, cloaks, armour and crowns. These seated figures, interacting only with themselves and in certain cases with the viewer, are set against a barren backdrop very likely taken from studies made by Nerdrum in Iceland.

Odd Nerdrum is the leading figurative painter working in Norway.  A pupil in Düsseldorf under Joseph Beuys, Nerdrum turned to seventeenth-century masters such as Rembrandt and Caravaggio for aesthetic inspiration, and bases his painting technique on traditional methods, mixing and grinding his own pigments, stretching his own canvases and using life models.