Kai Nielsen – Born of Everyday Life
Glyptotek, Copenhagen
30 May 2024 - 5 January 2025
Undated
Glyptotek's archive © Ida & Gustav Krog
Undated
© Holger Damgaard
The Water Mother. Designed 1918-20. Chopped 2003-04
The Glyptoteket © Anders Sune Berg
The Glyptotek presents Kai Nielsen – Born of Everyday Life. The exhibition has been devised in close collaboration with Faaborg Museum, which presents a parallel exhibition with the same title at the same time*.
If you have visited the Glyptotek in Copenhagen, you have probably already met "The Water Mother", who welcomes visitors to the Glyptotek from her pool in the Winter Garden. Maybe you have also seen Kai Nielsen’s sculptures of working people on Blågårds Square in Copenhagen, but without knowing they were by him.
Many people in Denmark even own their own little Kai Nielsen statuette. Kai Nielsen called his statuettes “hand-sized”. Designed for Bing & Grøndahl, Kähler and Dansk Kunsthandel, they ended up in countless Danish homes. Under #migogkai, owners of Kai Nielsen statuettes can share a photo and their story about the statuette, thereby becoming part of the exhibition.
Kai Nielsen - Muscle men, mythology and motherhood
Kai Nielsen (1882 – 1924) was fascinated by the human body. His themes included both strong male bodies with the ideal physique of antiquity as a role model – for example, in the monumental sculpture First Generation – and female figures inspired by ancient mythology like Aphrodite – for example in the sculpture "Aarhus Girl" or "Venus with the Apple". But he was also dedicated to everyday motifs: for example, "Girl Fiddling with Her Toes", statuettes of children, and busts of his family and of famous athletes, artists and art collectors of his day.
The Glyptotek and Kai Nielsen
Kai Nielsen’s endeavour to depict ‘what is natural’ and make his works accessible invests his art with a down-to-earth, popular quality. At the same time, his sculptures feature references to mythological and ancient stories. One of his most iconic works, "The Water Mother" (1921) – the landmark of the Glyptotek – was originally carved at the museum. Her story features in the exhibition, which will also introduce visitors to some of Kai Nielsen’s most well-known works.
Kai Nielsen attended the academy in Copenhagen and found inspiration at the Glyptotek, where he studied 19th-century French and Danish sculpture, and ancient Greek and Roman art. At an early stage in his career, he got in touch with the brewer Carl Jacobsen: maybe to inspire the patron of art to invest in his works. The Glyptotek has an extensive collection of Kai Nielsen’s sculptures and sketches, which are presented in the exhibition alongside loans from museums and private collections in Denmark and Norway.
Undated
The archive of the Glyptothek
© Peter Elfelt
First generation, 1906
Plaster
The Glyptoteket © Anders Sune Berg
Kai Nielsen
Morning Toilet, 1918
Faaborg Museum © Andreas Bastiansen
Kai Nielsen - Studying the body
Kai Nielsen was born and raised in Svendborg. There was something both down-to-earth and lofty about Kai Nielsen. This was reflected in the quasi-mythological story of Kai the sculptor and human being, to which his family, friends and acquaintances all contributed. He possessed a sparkling sense of humour, great charisma, superhuman willpower and manic industriousness, despite his rather frail constitution and poor health.
“It takes a healthy body to make healthy art,” was one of the mottos of the artist from Funen. This was a conviction he took literally. Persistently, he modelled the human body, while training his own. He rowed, swam, boxed, rode, fenced and wrestled, and hiked in the mountains of Norway, the home country of his wife, the painter Yanna Lange Kielland Holm (1880-1932). He fought an eternal battle between health and illness and, after several years of illness and operations, died in 1924 at the early age of 41.
* In Faaborg Museum, the exhibition runs from 9 June 2024 to 5 January 2025.
Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek
Dantes Plads 7 • 1556 Copenhagen
Faaborg Museum
Gronnegade 75 • 5600 Faaborg
