Hans Scherfig is one of the most complex and interesting Danish 20th century artists. Scherfig was both painter and author, but expression and mood in Scherfig’s art and his books pointed in very different directions. Where Scherfig’s characteristic jungle pictures evoke a paradisical world, Scherfig’s books often comprised fierce satirical attacks on society.
Scherfig was first and foremost a painter and first began to write in the 1930s, partly for financial reasons, but also due to an eye disease that almost forced Scherfig to give up painting for a number of years. Scherfig’s possibly most well-know novel, 'Stolen Spring', is a satirical protest against the old, authoritarian school and the heavy-handed discipline Scherfig himself experienced during his childhood at the Metropolitan School in Copenhagen.
While his literature was a battleground for Scherfig, in which he launched an attack on capitalism and Danish society, his painting was a place of artistic freedom characterized by light and play. Scherfig’s motifs were utopian depictions of a human-free environment, filled with colour and in distinct harmony.
The 22 x 30 cm jungle scene is a typical Scherfig, rich in animal-life and with a wealth of detail. The hammer fell at EUR 6,573.
See whether there are any Scherfig artworks currently on auction.
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See the categoryModern pictorial arts