Bjorn Ransve: Drawings 1961-2005

1,400 drawings in colour plus 100 illustrations in colour and black and white.

The Norwegian painter Bjørn Ransve (b. 1944) is one of the best-known contemporary Scandinavian artists. Very few painters indeed express themselves so brilliantly in two dimensions on a sheet of paper, thematically, technically and formally. His work is a dialogue that embraces art history enthusiastically, one that is deeply rooted in art history yet articulates something new and relevant to our times.

While still a student, he began to do figurative drawings, switching to abstraction before ultimately returning to the figurative although he never returns to precisely where he left off. Instead he is continually blending in new elements he has seen and recognised along the way. Consequently, his most recent work represents a sophisticated synthesis of elements from worlds which at first might seem virtually irreconcilable. This volume presents Bjørn Ransve’s drawings from all periods of his work. In themselves they provide a survey of his œuvre as a whole since drawings always accompany his paintings and prints – not merely as sketches or designs but as autonomous works of art in their own right, with both familiar and unfamiliar motifs and techniques. Moreover, the book provides a comprehensive text on Bjørn Ransve’s drawings, with the various groups of motifs studied in detail – when they appear and in what sequence and how they comment on each other – and fits them into the art historical context.