The Easel

Per Kirkeby, Pioneering Neo-Expressionist Painter, Dies at 79

Kirkeby came to prominence in the 1980’s when, together with German expressionists such as Baselitz, he helped revitalize painting. His works reflected the naturalist traditions of Nordic art and an early career dalliance with geology. One critic writes that Kirkeby “achieve[d] what many post-war painters have tried, coaxing abstraction and representation into uneasy but perpetual balance.”