Art from the Museum's Collection

Temporary exhibition from April 12 to August 10, 2014

Focus on people - the unifying theme of this exhibition.
Paintings of the everyday lives of most of us. At the workplaces, in the family, in political contexts.
Fellow human beings in different life stages and under different social conditions. Often depicted by painters who were engaged in the problems of their time and wanted their works of art to challenge and change the status quo.

	Søren Hjorth Nielsen: Queen of the Ramparts and her Lover, 1929 110 x90 cm, oil on canvas. Arbejdermuseet. In "Queen of the Ramparts and her Lover" Søren Hjorth Nielsen portrayed the shabbiness and the defiance of society's worst off and homeless people. His painting reflects a reality based on both observation and simplification.
	Erling Frederiksen: By the Ironing Board, 1940-42 197x116 cm, oil on canvas. Arbejdermuseet. With sober realism but in extraordinary size Erling Frederiksen painted scenes from everyday life like the young housewife at her ironing board.
	Hans Scherfig: From the 1931 Colonial Exposition in Paris 52x45 cm, watercolor. Arbejdermuseet. With the financial support of the Augustinus Foundation, the museum has recently acquired three watercolour paintings by Hans Scherfig. The paintings depict episodes from the great Colonial Exhibition in Paris in 1931. The motif with cod liver oil is from the Danish exhibition stand "Danmark Grønlandshus".

The idioms vary from sober and realistic to the modernist expressionism of the inter-war period and a more experimental or powerful social-realism.

The works are painted by famous Danish artists like Jørgen Andersen-Nærum, Victor Brockdorff, Erling Frederiksen, Erik Hagens, Anette Harboe Flensburg, Aksel Jørgensen, Ursula Reuter Christiansen, John Kørner and Hans Scherfig. But also nearly forgotten painters are represented – for instance Magnus Bengtsson, who in the 1910s worked determinedly to put the factory worker and his environment on the agenda.