Oluf Høst - Between heaven and earth

26 September 2009 - 5 April 2010

Oluf Høst – a Nordic Romantic

Oluf Høst Bognemark, Late Evening, 1946 © Oluf Høst Museum

Oluf Høst (b. 1884) was a painter who painted his immediate surroundings from his native island of Bornholm with great fervour; the smallholding Bognemark, the Bornholm herring smokehouses, the round churches and the starry sky. He usually returned to the same subjects to show the various moods associated with each of them.

Høst was closely attached to his native Bornholm. Like his contemporaries Karl Isakson, Edvard Weie, Olaf Rude and Niels Lergaard, he was a Bornholm Painer, but in fact he was more than that: Most of all Høst was a Nordic Romantic.

He was interested in mysticism and the spiritual dimensions of the physical world. To him it was essential to communicate the big in the small, the spirit of the place, as he called it. It was not so much the concrete subjects that interested him as what one perceives and experiences before them. Through painting he attempted to go beyond things’ physical form in order to understand their innermost being. In his own words Høst wished to reproduce “the silent godhead in nature”, to give his pictures “soul colour”. With this year’s autumn exhibition ARKEN explores this metaphysical aspect.

1884 - 1920 »

Høst was a local artist with a global perspective. He was inspired by some of the great foreign painters.

1920 - 1930 »

Many of the pictures Høst paints in the late 1920s and throughout the 1930s are dark and intense.

1930 - 1950 »

In 1935 Høst bought a smallholding and named it Bognemark. Bognemark is one of his most well-known motives.

1950 - 1966 »

Høst loved to paint fire. In his fire subjects he scratched the surface to create a more explosive effect.

Neo-romantic contemporary art »

ARKEN presents works from the museum's collection of artists.

ARKEN Education »

The museum offers an alternative cross-disciplinary teaching environment in connection with the changing exhibitions.