#processionsbilleder

[i12bent]

Birthday of local Danish painter Leo Estvad. - July 20, 1902 - 1986. Estvad was born in Copenhagen and was a multi-talented artist who wrote, painted and composed with equal ease. He lived in the region of Thy, where I was also born, from the 1930s onwards. His studio overlooked a local lake in what is now the first Danish National Park.

I have written about Estvad in my academic career, esp. about the way he represented black subjects in his prose and in his art. In his prose he tends to be casually racist, whereas in his paintings he seems to relish and respect otherness of any kind. Strange dualities as these abound in Danish culture where the racial other was long a rare sight...

Here are two Estvad canvases - one of his Procession canvases, which you can see at the local Heltborg Museum, and another bird/shaman canvas, entitled Foråret Kommer (Spring is Coming).