COPENHAGEN.- The Nivaagaard Collection will mark the 150th anniversary of Christine Swane’s birth with the most extensive presentation to date of the Danish artist’s wide-ranging career.
Opening September 26, 2026, Christine Swane. A Multifaceted Individualist brings together paintings, ceramics and textiles to trace an artistic life that developed over seven decades. The exhibition follows Swane from her early years among the Funen Painters to the increasingly independent and experimental practice she established later in life.
Swane (1876–1960) began as a painter, but her interests eventually expanded into ceramics, textiles and, late in her career, monumental mosaic. Across these different media, she maintained a distinctive sensitivity to color and a close engagement with the places and objects around her.
Born in Kerteminde, Swane grew up within the circle of the Funen Painters. Her older brother Johannes Larsen and his wife Alhed Larsen were central figures in the group, and like them she found inspiration in nature and everyday surroundings. From the beginning, however, Swane was determined to establish her own artistic identity.
While studying at the Women’s School of the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, she became dissatisfied with the instruction she was receiving. In 1901, together with fellow artists including Emilie Demant Hatt, she helped organize an alternative school in Copenhagen, where Fritz Syberg taught. She later sought out other artistic influences independently, with painter Karl Isakson becoming especially important to her development.
In 1910, Swane met the painter Sigurd Swane. The two married, had a son, Lars, and settled on Falkoner All in Frederiksberg. Their marriage was short-lived, but Swane’s years in the district became a productive period. Houses, urban greenery, potted plants and even domestic objects such as a kitchen washbasin were transformed in her paintings into increasingly simplified, almost abstract arrangements of color.
A major new chapter began when Swane moved to Birkerd. There she created not only a home but an environment structured around her work. In 1935, she had an apple-green Functionalist villa built with a ceramic kiln, greenhouse and garden, where she lived with her son Lars and her sister Marie Larsen.
It was in Birkerd that ceramics became a central part of her practice. Swane produced bowls, vases and dishes decorated with animal motifs and abstract designs, many of them strikingly modern in form. She also explored textiles, creating patchwork pieces and embroidered or printed tablecloths, placemats and scarves.
Only a small number of Swane’s original textiles have survived, in part because textiles were long excluded from museum definitions of fine art. The exhibition will present a selection of the surviving works, while textile artist Anne Fabricius Mller has also produced new pieces based on Swane’s original pattern drawings, bringing renewed attention to this less familiar part of her career.
For Swane, the boundary between art and daily life was fluid. Her home was filled with her own work: paintings hung on the walls, ceramics and small sculptures stood on windowsills, and handmade textiles and pottery were used as part of everyday routines.
The house also became a recurring source of imagery. For her still lifes, Swane might arrange objects on one of her own tiled tables or place them against a tablecloth she had designed. Her compositions frequently combined her ceramics with colored glass, flowers from the garden and produce from the greenhouse, turning the domestic environment into a continual source of artistic material.
Swane continued to experiment well into old age. At 72, she accepted a major public commission in a medium she had never previously worked in: mosaic. In 1948, the same year she was selected for the Venice Biennale, she received a commission to create a large mosaic for Damsbadet in Frederiksberg.
Measuring more than three by three meters, the work depicts three female gymnasts exercising beneath a bright sun and blue sky. At the same time, it functions as an abstract composition of color and shimmering surfaces. The exhibition will explore the demanding process behind the mosaic through film footage and original materials. Swane’s son, the artist Lars Swane, assisted her with the project and on other occasions throughout her career.
Swane remained active almost until the end of her life. In 1957, she traveled to the San Cataldo retreat accompanied by Lars. By then she was living with his family in Farum, while the two artists also painted during summers at their shared house in Holtbjerg in northern Jutland. Several of her best-known late works date from this period, including Granskov, which will be included in the exhibition.
The retrospective has been organized in close collaboration with the Johannes Larsen Museum and Ribe Art Museum and will be accompanied by a fully illustrated publication featuring new essays on Swane’s work and career.
The exhibition also forms part of a broader renewed focus on the artist in Denmark. At the same time, the Hirschsprung Collection will present The Funen Painters – Art Above All!, examining three artist couples: Alhed and Johannes Larsen, Anna and Fritz Syberg, and Christine and Sigurd Swane.
The two museums are collaborating during the run of the exhibitions. Visitors to one show will receive a voucher that can be presented at the other museum in exchange for a postcard.
Christine Swane. A Multifaceted Individualist will be on view at the Nivaagaard Collection from September 26, 2026, through January 31, 2027. The Funen Painters – Art Above All! will run at the Hirschsprung Collection from September 18, 2026, through January 24, 2027.
