The renowned Faroese graphic and visual artist Elinborg Lützen was born in Klaksvík in the Faroe Islands on July 26, 2019. Klaksvík is the largest fishing town and the capital of the Northern Islands. It is a busy and lively town, surrounded by high and magnificent mountains.
Elinborg Lützen has received great recognition for her artistic work, all of which is of particularly high quality. In 1978 she became the first Faroese woman to receive the Faroese Award of Honour handed out annually by the Faroese Parliament. In 1980 she received Children's Book Honorary Award awarded by Tórshavn City Council for her outstanding children's book illustrations, consisting of black-and-white marker drawings and linocuts.
Lützen’s 100th anniversary will be celebrated on several fronts. In Klaksvík, her birthplace, a statue of Elinborg Lützen will be inaugurated on September 24, 2019, and an exhibition of her works will open that very same day in Klaksvík. The statue was sculpted by the Faroese artist Hans Pauli Olsen and is the first of its kind in the Faroe Islands of a known historical woman. The initiator of the project in Klaksvík is the Faroese artist Edward Fuglø.
Posta will be celebrating the anniversary of this remarkable artist with a special stamp issue. The motif is Elinborg Lützen's portrait designed in clay - details from the new statue. The stamp will be issued on September 23, 2019, the day before the statue's inauguration.
About Elinborg Lützen (July 26, 1919 - November 22, 1995)
Elinborg belongs to the first generation of professional Faroese visual artists. In 1937, she moved to Copenhagen to study at the Institute of Art and Drawing for Women. When World War II broke out, she was left stranded in Denmark as travels between Denmark and the Faroes were no longer possible.
This involuntary exile from the Faroe Islands proved to be crucial for Elinborg’s artistic development and that of other Faroese artists who were also left stranded in Denmark at the time. For it was in Copenhagen during World War II that an environment for Faroese visual arts was created for the first time. As soon as the war was over, all these artists travelled back home to the Faroes in one group on the same ship along with other Faroese men and women who had taken interest in artistic endeavours during the war and founded the Faroe Islands’ Art Association in Copenhagen.
Faroese artists returning home in a single group was a very special and historic event which proved to be of crucial importance for the artistic environment which developed in the post-war period in the Faroe Islands, especially with respect to the visual arts. It was this community of artists that took the initiative to the construction of the Faroese Art Museum, which opened in 1969.
For many years Elinborg was married to the painter Sámal-Joensen Mikines, the first recognised painter of the Faroe Islands and one of the islands' most important artists, generally acknowledged as the father of Faroese painting. Elinborg Lützen was the first - and for a long time the only - graphic artist in the Faroes. Her illustrations of a great number of Faroese children's books attest to her stature as being probably the first Faroese artist to leave an indelible imprint on the eyes of younger generations. In her distinctive black and white linocuts, she portrays everything from idyllic urban scenes and mundane life to sinister giants and witches, and the hideous ogress with her 40 tails, descending from the mountain with a stick in her hand and a sack on her back to slice out children’s stomachs if they cried for meat during Lent. Elinborg's sombre scenes are filled with unfathomable content which is even more frightening than skulls, giants and old hags, clearly visible despite the darkish surroundings with pronounced delineation of the subjects. Elinborg's black colour does not just show black planes but sombre shadows filled with the imagination's monsters and foetuses. The old adventures and rhymes create strong and poignant scenarios, sometimes harrowing but at other times beautiful and poetic. Elinborg's illustrations lend an extra dimension to the rich Faroese folk culture.
The great contrasts between life and death, good and evil, wisdom and folly are sharply emphasized, throwing into relief the essence of the narratives which are composed in a distinctive Faroese style, even though the content, form and moral of the adventures are universally human. These features characterize much of Elinborg's works: nature and rural environments create an unmistakable Faroese atmosphere, which may seem exotic while at the same time reflecting universal experiences and conveying shared European traditions.
Elinborg's works are not only accessible to children and adults in and outside the Faroe Islands. They also constitute, in and of themselves, very original, strange and fascinating adventures. Strangely magical, scary and beautiful figures are shown in naturalistic surroundings, as if these settings were quite normal in the Faroe Islands - which also is the case to a great extent. Nature is the obvious framework around our daily life, and stories, imagination and poetry are a natural part of Faroese mentality and identity.
By nature, Lützen was a very modest person. She participated in exhibitions in the Faroe Islands and abroad while never agreeing to hold separate exhibitions in her own name. She has often been called "master of black-and-white", her linocuts being a startlingly original and deeply interesting contribution to art both in and outside the Faroe Islands.
Source: Løgmansskrivstovan
