Spirits and skeletons. Women bathing at dusk, their skin almost indistinguishable from the lake’s indigo-blue surface. Mysterious gatherings seemingly portrayed on the verge of emotional upheaval. Carnival scenes. Longing faces. A bewildered, clown-like face—smiling or the opposite?—wrapped in a sickly, moss-green glow. Eva Helene Pade’s paintings are saturated with bodies, souls, and emotions woven into lavish compositions and expansive dimensions. Yet for many, Eva Helene Pade remains an unknown figure, so here’s a closer look at her as an artist.

Born in 1997, Eva Helene Pade grew up in Odense, where she received significant recognition at a young age for her then entirely self-taught skills at the easel. In 2017, at just 19 years old, she won the prestigious Carlsberg Foundation’s Young Talent Prize. The award has been given every two years since 2007, and Pade’s work was selected from over 1,000 submissions.

Following this, Eva Helene Pade was admitted to the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen, where it did not take long before her talent gained serious attention on the Copenhagen art scene. She participated in several group exhibitions and soon established a collaboration with Galleri Nicolai Wallner, based in the Nordvest district of Copenhagen. Since then, her career has only ascended. In 2022, she had her first major solo exhibition at the same gallery titled Moments of Transition (2022), and she has participated in group exhibitions in Turin (2021 & 2023), Berlin (2021), New York (2024), and at the prestigious Thaddaeus Ropac gallery in London. Thaddaeus Ropac now represents Eva Helene Pade, marking a significant step towards an international breakthrough.

As mentioned, Eva Helene Pade's canvases are at times no less than colossal. For her Moments of Transition exhibition, the titular piece measured a staggering 410 x 549 cm. The painting depicts a chaotic crowd on the verge of total fusion. In the foreground, the figures are clearly defined: some are furious, others are suffering, some are clown-like, twisting in pain, or hurling themselves into the crowd. Further back, the faces blur, making it impossible to distinguish whether they are humans, ghosts, or both. Above them, in the sky, a white horse emerges from a mist, with fiery skulls visible around its hooves. It is a striking piece—grand in scale and ambition—reflecting Eva Helene Pade’s remarkable technical skill.

The artist herself describes her approach to painting: “My art can perhaps best be described as an attempt to make the intangible—feelings, atmospheres, sensations—a bit more tangible. But art always remains abstract, even when it is figurative, because it deals with something we can never fully define.”

Subtly at times, and overtly at others, her canvases often contain references to her deep interest in art history. In a work such as Danse Macabre #3, for instance, one can identify a skeleton from Gustav Klimt’s paintings crouched among the crowd in the background. Pade has also cited painters such as Norwegian Edvard Munch and Belgian James Ensor as key sources of inspiration.

Recently, Eva Helene Pade has turned her focus to the renowned ballet Le Sacre du Printemps (1913) by Russian composer Igor Stravinsky and its 1975 interpretation by German choreographer Pina Bausch. The ballet, known in Danish as Forårsofret, is also the title of her upcoming exhibition at ARKEN. The ballet tells the tragic story of a young woman chosen as a sacrificial offering to spring, dancing herself to death. In her works, Pade experiments with reversing this narrative while developing a new painterly approach to depicting female bodies.

Eva Helene Pade states, “Through music, dance, and painting—media that give sound, movement, and form to the abstract—we create a space, a distance between ourselves and emotion. It is within this space that we can truly experience the strength of feelings… My paintings seek to capture this space—the place where we, as humans, are both unique individuals and part of something greater.”

Eva Helene Pade graduated from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen in 2024. She currently lives and works in Paris.

You can experience her largest solo exhibition to date right here at the museum in 2025.‍

^{Eva Helene Pade. Photo: Petra Kleis.}

Eva Helene Pade:

Born in 1997. Grew up in Odense, Denmark. Lives and works in Paris, France.

Received the Carlsberg Foundation’s Young Talent Award in 2017.

Participated at the “Uno, Nessuno, Centomila” group exhibition, Artuner, Turin, in 2021.

Participated in a group exhibition at König Galerie, Berlin, Germany, in 2021.

Exhibited at Galleri Nicolai Wallner in Copenhagen with the solo exhibition Moments of Transitionin 2022.

Participated in a group exhibition at Nahmad Contemporary, New York, USA, in 2024.

Graduated from The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen in 2024. ‍

‍

References:

Linea Maria Andersen, “19-årig kunstkomet flytter til Berlin: Skal turde tage springet”, Fyens Stiftstidende, 28 May 2017.

Ludovica Colacino, “Eva Helene Pade: In Conversation”, Artuner, 2023.

Bodil Skovgaard Nielsen, “Et frækt skolebord og en dans ved afgrunden: Kunstsæsonen lægger ualmindeligt stærkt ud”, Information, 31 August 2022.

Galleri Nicolai Wallner, “Eva Helene Pade – Moments of Transitions”, 2022.

Galleri Nicolai Wallner, “Eva Helene Pade – Biography & Bibliography”, 2024.