Norvald Valand

V. painted portraits, landscapes, interiors and installations, primarily based on Chr. Krohg's color and painterly program. V. was noted by the Kra. critics already at the Autumn Exhibition in 1919 and the Spring Exhibition in Chra. Art Association 1920, especially for Still Life (1920) of a blue cup and a lemon. During his stay in Paris in 1921, V. preferred to study on his own. In Paris and the small town of Charly-sur-Marne, he found the silvery gray tones with careful value transitions that characterized his landscapes for several years. V. then settled in Haugesund for 12 years under partly difficult working conditions. He painted a number of portraits, i.a. one by the painter Erling Merton, and several light-filled interior studies, such as Husmannskjön (Haugesund Billedgall.). In the spring of 1933, he moved to Oslo, primarily to resume contact with the art scene in the capital. With his sensitive ability to characterize and painterly treatment of the figure motif, he soon became a sought-after portrait painter. In these years, he worked particularly with problems of form and picture structure, still with a muted color scale. Only the flower images had a stronger color register. As he found a formal certainty, the coloring also became bolder in the landscape pictures, which also increasingly became his main interest. This development can be traced from the early images from Southern Norway, through later works from Valdres and the many motifs from Stabekk in Bærum and up to the last summer's images from Vågå in Gudbrandsdalen. V. also worked with watercolors and pencil sketches, especially with floral motifs, and engravings, ink and etchings. He also painted for a time in oil in black and white, a tone painting where he achieved peculiar effects of painterly values. In recent years, V. was reluctant to part with his pictures. The memorial exhibition in Haugesund in 1944 of his remaining production was therefore representative of the artistic expression he had arrived at.

Johan Lie Gjemre

After interrupting architecture studies in the USA and three years at the Statens Håndverks- og Kunstindustriskole, L.-G began. in 1925 as a student at Axel Revold's private painting school and continued under the same teacher at the Academy of Fine Arts. Revold's style and form of teaching had a strong effect on the young people, and L.-G. was clearly characterized by his formal and coloristic expressionism. In 1926–27 he was in Paris as a student of Otte Sköld at the Académie Scandinave, where he also met Per Krohg. In 1935–36, L.-G. to Spain to study Spanish art. Semana Santa (1935, National Gallery, Oslo) shows a group of women dressed in black and mantillas monumentally against the background. A couple of small touches of red contrast with the black. In Lommedalen, at Stavern and in Southern Norway, L.-G. studied nature during changing seasons. The landscapes are lightly stylized with simplified forms. L.-G. experiments with strong colors and often uses the primary color spectrum, red, blue and yellow. He has a broad, unifying stroke and a strong decorative tendency in the structure of the picture surface. But the bold use of color can also turn out to be unfortunate with poor sound effects and a lack of materiality. Solpike (privately owned) has a strong and intense color in bright red and yellow. L.-G. gradually worked towards a purer color and a more moderate colouring, while at the same time the simplification of form became stronger. Friends is one of his many horse pictures. The landscape is lightly abstracted with two horses facing each other and a movement that links them together. The use of complementary colors gives a nice sound effect. L.-G. has a large output that ranges from moderate naturalism to constructive modernism. But he consistently shows a decorative attitude in his art and is always closely linked to nature.