LEFT TO RIGHT Morris Louis, Saf Heh, 1959, ASOM Collection. Installation view, The Shape of Freedom, Munchmuseet, Oslo. © Munchmuseet / Ove Kvavik
The Shape of Freedom draws connecting lines between Europe in the aftermath of war, and America’s burgeoning, influential art scene in the same period. On both sides of the ocean, society was reacting to the horrors of the Second World War, the Holocaust and the coming of the atom bomb. The exhibition shows how artists searched for new ways to deal with these shattering events, with works by Sam Francis, Helen Frankenthaler, Lee Krasner, Joan Mitchell, Ernst Wilhelm Nay, Barnett Newman, Jackson Pollock, Georges Mathieu, Mark Rothko, Hedda Sterne and Clyfford Still, among others.
This exhibition – the largest of its kind in Norway to date – will present the works in a very special atmosphere and environment, at once meditative and inclusive, which gestures to the working conditions of many of these artists in the field of abstract expressionism and art informel.
RIGHT Lee Krasner, Uncaged, 1960, ASOM Collection. Installation view, The Shape of Freedom, Munchmuseet, Oslo. © Munchmuseet / Ove Kvavik
RIGHT Perle Fine, Winter Image, 1958, ASOM Collection. Installation view, The Shape of Freedom, Munchmuseet, Oslo. © Munchmuseet / Ove Kvavik
RIGHT TO LEFT Lee Krasner, Blue Level, 1955, ASOM Collection; Deborah Remington, Winter'63, 1963, ASOM Collection. Installation view, The Shape of Freedom, Munchmuseet, Oslo. © Munchmuseet / Ove Kvavik
CENTRE Jean-Paul Riopelle, Untitled, 1954, ASOM Collection. Installation view, The Shape of Freedom, Munchmuseet, Oslo. © Munchmuseet / Ove Kvavik
RIGHT Hans Hartung, T 1955-9, 1955, ASOM Collection. Installation view, The Shape of Freedom, Munchmuseet, Oslo. © Munchmuseet / Ove Kvavik
Hans Hartung, T 1962-K48, 1962, ASOM Collection. Installation view, The Shape of Freedom, Munchmuseet, Oslo. © Munchmuseet / Ove Kvavik
