Göteborgs konstmuseum | Orpheus and Eurydice by Palle Nielsen

WEB TOURS

Here we present web exhibitions, some of which are, or have been, displayed at the museum, and some that are exclusively created for the web. A web exhibition comprises a text plus a list of works. From the list of works, you can click to the searchable database. This page will be updated continuously as new, differently themed web exhibitions become available.

Select a web exhibition by clicking in the adjacent list.

View: Detail
- 1
  - 1
  - First
  - Last
- Results 1

Orpheus and Eurydice by Palle Nielsen

The Danish graphic artists Palle Nielsen created condensed images that show the vulnerability of humanity in modern society, in which it is constantly threatened with destruction by technology and the monsters it creates. Technology is exploited by totalitarian powers and treats humans as pawns in a geopolitical game. Palle Nielsen commented his images in the following way: “I don’t really have a message. I just experience – and report what I see – and it is a truly dismal perspective.”

Nielsen’s most famous work is the Orpheus and Eurydice series, the first part of which was published in book form in 1959. It is made up of 53 linocuts created between 1955 and 1959. The second part, Isola, was published in 1971. The third remains unfinished. Orpheus and Eurydice is a visual epic based on the ancient Greek myth of Orpheus, who tries to appease Hades, the ruler of the underworld, to reclaim his beloved, the nymph Eurydice, who had died from a snakebite. Orpheus plays so beautifully on his harp that Hades grants his wish, on the condition that he does not turn around as he ascends from the realm of death. But Orpheus cannot help himself from looking back to see Eurydice, and loses her forever.

In Nielsen’s series of images, the myth has been transported to an unspecified modern city. The world seems to be afflicted by an evil enchantment. Eurydice is carried off in a helicopter by the underworld police. Orpheus searches for her in a coastal city full of danger, where bombs go off, electricity cables crash to the ground, and corpses are fished up out of the river. Human decency and rationality are put to the test. People adapt, but under the surface their despair grows. In the outskirts of the city lies a blown out warship, like a ghost ship in the river Styx, the boundary between life and the realm of death.

Palle Nielsen was born and raised in Copenhagen. He trained as a commercial illustrator but was unhappy in that profession and changed direction to pursue a career as a free artist. During the Second World War, when Denmark was occupied by Germany, he served as a fireman and many of his images are based on his experiences during this time. After the war, Nielsen studied at the Academy of Art, where he later became professor of graphic art. His discovery of Frans Masereel’s woodcuts was decisive for his continued career as a printmaker. In 1952, Nielsen started to work with linocuts, and the same year he had his debut exhibition. Travels to Rome and Florence made a lasting mark on his images, which often feature buildings with cupolas, based on the architecture of the Italian renaissance and baroque.

Palle Nielsen developed his graphic technique to the level of mastery. As a draughtsman he is free and fast, and his linocuts are precise, with their own visual idiom based on patterns, surfaces and lines that evoke planes, bodies and volumes in an intricate rhythmic interplay. As an etcher, Nielsen has a more brittle linear style. His work is characterised by a film-like, narrative visual language, dynamic compositions, steep perspectives and the rhythmic interweaving of opposites.

Works