Six lines in the wooden block are all it takes to conjure the leopard. Gustav Vigeland possessed a sensitivity that rarely becomes visible. His graphic production is modest in scope—around 400 works in total—but it is by no means insignificant.
Vigeland has left a significant mark on Oslo, with the Vigeland Museum and the principal decorations in Frogner Park as the most prominent. In addition, the city is home to three particularly important monuments, fittingly located a short distance away from the Royal Palace: the monument to the mathematician Niels Henrik Abel (unveiled in 1908), the composer Rikard Nordraak (1911), and the writer Camilla Collett (1911). These three monuments cemented Vigeland’s position as Norway’s foremost sculptor.
He began working with woodcut as an artistic medium around 1914, at a point in his life when he was in his mid-forties. Unlike his colleague Edvard Munch, Vigeland was neither experimental nor avant-garde. It is also safe to say that this was never his intention.
The sixteen woodcuts we have selected for this exhibition do not represent the full breadth of Vigeland’s production. But they offer a clear impression of what occupied him and how he worked. The themes are those we find in most of his sculptures and sculptural groups: human relationships, portraits, animals. In his graphic work he also engaged with landscape.
The execution of the prints range from the rugged to the delicate. The prints Walking Figure and Horse belong to the first category, while Leopard belongs to the latter. It is this motif that emerges with the help of only six lines.
Among the interesting works presented are two motifs depicting humans in combat with lizards. These two, made around 1917, found their final form in granite nearly twenty years later. Vigeland allowed them to become an important part of the decoration of the Bridge in Frogner Park. This shows that he was not opposed to reusing either motifs or themes.
What many may not be aware of is that Vigeland mastered several modes of expression. This became especially evident in the wake of the agreement he made with the municipality in 1921. The city had decided to finance and construct a studio for him. After his death, it was to open as a publicly run museum dedicated to his work, as we know it today. A private apartment was also built as part of the complex, and it is here that we can see Vigeland’s interest in interior and design. He drew and designed lamps, candlesticks, and patterns for tablecloths, runners, cushions, and carpets.
– Jarle Strømodden, director at the Vigelandmuseet