This book features an enormous variety of artists and works that explore the impact of Nordic geography, history, social mores, and national identities on the region's painters. Focusing on the "core" countries?Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Iceland?as well as the Faroe Islands, Greenland, and the Danish-German border region, the authors present a thematically organised overview of Nordic art between the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Drawing from the most recent scholarship, the book considers the prevalent themes and subjects, such as landscapes, genre scenes, portraits, interiors, modern city life, and abstraction, and analyses various works by artists such as Edvard Munch, Vilhelm Hammershoi, Helene Schjerfbeck, Johannes S. Kjarval, and Sigrid Hjerten. It looks at the rise of modernism in Nordic art and discusses the artistic interaction between North and Central Europe. A final chapter is devoted to the significance of Nordic painting today. Comprehensive and authoritative, this beautifully illustrated book is certain to become the standard volume on Nordic art. AUTHOR: Katharina Alsen studied art history at the University of Oxford and German and Scandinavian studies, theology, and philosophy at the University of Hamburg. Studies abroad led her to Copenhagen, Reykjavík, and Torshavn on the Faroe Islands. Alsen was a scholar at the research training group "InterArt" at the Freie Universitat Berlin and at the University of Copenhagen with a doctoral project on staged intimacy. In addition to modernist painting of the Nordic countries, her research interests include contemporary performance art and curatorial theories. She is a regular speaker on art history and theater studies. Annika Landmann studied art history and Italian language and literature at the University of Hamburg, where she wrote her PhD thesis on the self-portraits of Helene Schjerfbeck. She specialises in the painting of the Nordic countries between the 1880s and the 1940s. During her research, the German-Finnish scholar was a fellow at the University of Turku, Finland, and she currently works for various museums and cultural institutions, among other fields in the area of art education. 200 colour illustrations
