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9/6/2003

Ornulf Opdahl

Purdy Hicks Gallery, London

New Paintings

Purdy Hicks are delighted to be presenting Ornulf Opdahl's first solo exhibition in a London commercial gallery. Critically acclaimed in Norway the artist is relatively unknown in England though we hope the exhibition will help to redress this.

Ornulf Opdahl lives and works on the island of Godoy on the west coast of Norway, near Alesund where he was born. He derives his inspiration from the surrounding landscape encapsulating its dark menace and its overwhelming beauty. Man's presence, though rarely depicted in the canvasses, is felt and juxtaposed against nature's grandeur. The images he paints, therefore, are not picturesque Nordic stereotypes or the rural idyll but nature in all its bold, ominous magnificence
where Man's mortality is contextualized and set against nature's permanence.

Ornulf Opdahl was born in 1944. He studied at the Norwegian Art Academy from 1962 to 1965 and held his first major one-man show at the Oslo Art Association in 1966. By the 1970s he had established his reputation as one of the leading painters of his generation and was exhibiting regularly at the major galleries in Oslo. His early figurative paintings of the 60's and early 70s gradually evolved towards a large-scale painting format in which colouristic highlights became more dominant. Like many of his contemporaries at that time, Opdahl was interested in late 1800's Symbolism, not least Munch's pictorial idiom. By the mid-1980's Opdahl had developed his own distinctly personal approach to his painting, which he has evolved since returning to the west coast of Norway where he continues to live and work.

Private View Tuesday 10 June 6-8pm

Exhibition dates 11 June - 28 June 2003

To be opened by the Norwegian Ambassador
H.E. Mr. Tarald Brautaset

For further information or illustration please contact the Purdy Hicks Gallery
On telephone number 0207 401 9229

Purdy Hicks Gallery
65 Hopton Street (Bankside)
London

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