HOLSTEBRO.- Olivia Holm-Møller was classically trained, but she looked at the world in a different way than most, and in time expressed herself in a manner which was quite unconventional.

Her fondness for immediacy, combined with her willfulness and secluded lifestyle, places Olivia Holm-Møller (1875-1970) outside the usual categories. She very much pursued her own objectives and used her own resources, and managed time and again to renew herself – she was for example abstract in expression at the time of abstract art. On top of this, she also had a highly unusual global outlook for the time. All of this undoubtedly helps to explain why she continues to fascinate artists, critics and audiences.

The artist and writer Erik Steffensen is among the fans of Olivia Holm-Møller’s art, especially the quirky and sometimes almost ‘clumsy’ aspects of her expression. In the catalogue essay 'Olivia’s World', he explores the artist’s life and her many pictorial spaces, and describes and links a number of features of her temperament and personality. In order to delineate Olivia Holm-Møller’s special domains, Erik Steffensen has divided her sensuous imagery into six themes -

Mythologies, loneliness, energy, longing (eroticism), self-portraits and cosmos . For each of these, he has chosen a related, internationally-recognised contemporary artist – Alfred Jensen, Kehnet Nielsen, Jonathan Meese, Poul Gernes, Ursula Reuther Christensen and Tal R – with a strong expression to emphasise the pioneering nature of her work and show just how directly she speaks to our time.

Olivia Holm-Møller’s great passion was painting, and the exhibition are therefore both entirely focused on this. Sculptures, drawings and graphics by the artist have not been included. Neither the catalogue nor the exhibition thus has the character of a retrospective in the traditional art historical sense. This is, in other words, an offbeat exhibition about an offbeat artist. As a painter, she balanced colourfully on a tightrope in a grand and strange world of imagery. The ground has thus been laid for what will hopefully prove to be some spicy and surprising experiences when contemporary painting meets Olivia Holm-Møller – and vice versa.

The exhibition has been created in close partnership with Erik Steffensen. The catalogue was generously supported by Aage og Johanne Louis-Hansens Fond, A.P. Mortensen og hustrus Legat and Overretssagfører L. Zeuthens Mindelegat.