Artist of the Month: Rudolf Tegner

Tegner was a Danish sculptor of the Victorian and early twentieth century period, somewhat successful in his early life he later fell out favour due to the symbolism of his art which was heavily influenced by Frederich Nietzsche and Georges Brandes and seen by some to have links to fascism.


Like Gustav Vigeland, Tegner was preoccupied with the human form which he used as a metaphor for the human condition, and as he seems to have seen humanity as something dramatic and grandiose, so his work often shows people in heroic and dramatic poses. They are also often naked, sensual and sometimes even erotic, which didn't go down well a century ago. Denmark is a fairly broad minded society today, but in 1900, propriety dictated a standard which Tegner largely ignored. As his works became more and more daring, he became isolated by the cultural elite. With time he became what is known as an 'eccentric', being largely shunned by his former supporters. Tegner repsonded by going off into the countryside and building a minimalist museum to himself and filling it with his own work. Today it is also his mausoluem.


I like Tegner's work for two main reasons. First of all, because it is beautiful. Like Tegner I see the human form as the ultimate expression of the human condition, and I have no problem with seeing humanity as muscular, energetic, sexual, or the converse. Old, frail, flawed but still beautiful. There is beauty in decay, and love forgives all.

The second reason why I like Tegner's work, is because he never compromised. He told convention to bugger off and created that which he himself desired. The scale and ambition of his creativity is self evident in the scale and ambition of his work and there is appeal in both. The limits of his reach were only reached by the limit of his medium and given the opportunity I bet Tegner would have reached higher and greater than any Danish artist before or since. Alas, alas, as always, it was never to be. As grand as Tegners works are, today he is hardly known at all. Many of his commissioned works, considered old fashioned, crude and politically incorrect were later removed to his isolated museum where they dot the surrounding landscape, monuments to a discarded titan.