Gustav Vigeland

Biography

In 1921 the city of Oslo decided to demolish the house where Gustav Vigeland lived, in order to build a library on the site. The dispute with the city dragged on and ended in a bargain: the sculptor received a new building for a studio and home, and the city received everything he would make from then on, including sculptures, drawings, engravings and models.

He was born on 11 April 1869 in Halse, near Mandal in the south of Norway, and was then called Adolf Gustav Thorsen. His father, Elisæus Thorsen, was a cabinetmaker, and the boy had early access to tools and wood. As a child he spent long periods with his maternal grandfather on the Mjunebrokka farm in the district of Vigeland, from which he later took his surname; the grandfather is also credited with finding the best wood carver in the area to teach him. His father lost money on investments in ships, the family broke up, and in 1884 Gustav was sent to Kristiania (now Oslo) as an apprentice to a wood carver. In the evenings he attended classes at the Drawing School. In 1886 the workshop closed and his father was dying, and the young man went back to Mandal. He returned to Kristiania in 1888, this time intending to become a sculptor. In February 1889 he went to the sculptor Brynjulf Bergslien with a bundle of his own sketches. Bergslien saw his talent and, with the help of the art historian Lorentz Dietrichson, gathered a small circle of people willing to support the young man. It was then that Thorsen began to call himself Vigeland. In the same year, at the Autumn Exhibition, he showed the statuette group “Hagar and Ishmael”, and in 1890 he worked as an assistant to Mathias Skeibrok.

In the 1890s he travelled widely: Copenhagen, where he received a grant and worked on the group “Accursed”; Paris in 1893, where he became acquainted with the work of Rodin; then Berlin, and six months in Florence in 1895. In Berlin he met Edvard Munch, and, by report, they lived in the same hotel for several months. The relief “Hell” of 1894 is linked to Rodin’s “The Gates of Hell”. Death and the relationship between man and woman appeared in his work then and remained his main themes. He held two solo exhibitions: in 1894 (51 works) and in 1899 (42 works).

From 1898 to 1902 he worked on the decoration of Nidaros Cathedral in Trondheim. The commission did not much excite him, but it brought a steady income. On a grant to study Gothic art, Vigeland spent almost a year in France and England, and in Paris modelled a bust of Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson. Soon after his return he gave up the cathedral work: it was, he felt, hindering his development.

He began modelling portraits on his own initiative: it was both a technical schooling and a hope of selling the busts to museums and collectors. There are about a hundred in all, most of them from 1901–1907. Ibsen, Hamsun, Grieg, Garborg and Nansen sat for him. In 1901 he won the competition for the Nobel Peace Prize medal, and in the same year was made a knight of the Order of St. Olav; in 1929 he received the Grand Cross. The 1900s brought monuments to Abel (unveiled on 17 October 1908), Rikard Nordraak, Camilla Collett and Wergeland in Kristiansand. His model of Abel, nude and standing on two figures, went beyond the terms of the competition, and the jury chose another sculptor; Bjørnson and Gunnar Heiberg spoke up for Vigeland, and in 1907 it was decided to erect his statue. In the 1890s his figures had been close to nature and dramatic; in the 1900s they became calmer. After 1910 he began modelling with stone carving in mind, and his form grew simpler: fewer details, larger planes. From 1914 he also made woodcuts; the Vigeland Museum counts about 430 sheets made up to 1940, often dramatic landscapes of southern Norway.

He had been nursing the idea of a fountain since 1901. A fund for a fountain had existed in Oslo since the 1890s, and in 1906 Vigeland showed a model at the Museum of Decorative Arts. In October 1907 the city council agreed to allocate the money, although the estimate was almost four times the fund’s 85,000 kroner. The site changed more than once: the square in front of the Storting, Norway’s parliament, and Abel’s hill in the park by the royal palace. In 1919 he conceived a tall column of ascending figures, and in 1921 he proposed placing the whole complex beside his new studio in Frogner. He ordered the block of stone for the monolith from a quarry at his own expense, not knowing whether the site would be approved; in 1924 the park in Frogner was finally confirmed. The studio on Nobels gate had been his home since 1924. The monolith was raised upright on 15 August 1928 and carved from 1929 to 1943, mostly by three stonecutters. In May 1940, despite the war, the installation of 58 bronze sculptures on the bridge parapet began. In all, the park holds 212 bronze and granite works, and the monolith has 121 figures.

During the occupation he wrote that he would gladly open his studio to German officials; the letter was later published in the pro-Nazi press, and he was accused of sympathy for Nazism. The museum explains that the studio was funded by the city, that visits at the city’s request had taken place since 1924, and that Vigeland himself was not present at them.

Vigeland died on 12 March 1943. The funeral took place on 19 March at the Western Crematorium, and his ashes are kept in the tower of the Vigeland Museum. Water was turned on in the fountain in 1947, forty years after the commission, and most of the sculptures were in place around 1950.