CARL NESJAR, who has died aged 94, was a prolific Norwegian artist who produced paintings, sculptures, photographs, neon installations and prints but was best known for working with Pablo Picasso on vast concrete artworks.
The pair collaborated from the late 1950s up to Picasso’s death in 1973, producing some 30 works. These included several renowned murals at the Høyblokka, the Norwegian government buildings in downtown Oslo, which were later badly damaged by the bomb planted by Anders Breivik in July 2011. The future of several of those works, including Fiskerne ( The Fishermen) and Måken ( The Seagull), is presently under threat.
Picasso never came to Oslo, instead he provided sketches from which Nesjar worked up monumental compositions etched in concrete using his own sand-blasting method called Betograve. The government commission, under the guise of architect Erling Viksjö, included internal and external works depicting – in cubist and naïve fashion – satyrs, fauns, fish, boats and birds. In addition to the Oslo murals, the pair collaborated on a series of standing sculptures of female figures now situated in Marseille, Stockholm and Chicago and on the campuses of Princeton and NYU.
The Nasher Sculpture Center describes Nesjar’s Betograve method as “first pouring concrete into a form tightly packed with gravel, and, once set, precisely sandblasting the surface of the concrete to expose the gravel beneath it.” The fluidity of the technique was perfect for Picasso’s dashed-off designs. “Picasso’s whiplash line has lost none of its vitality,” noted the art historian Douglas Cooper on Nesjar’s concrete interpretations.
Nesjar was born Carl Carlsen on July 6 1920 in Larvik at the southern end of the outer Oslofjord. He adopted the name Nesjar as a reference to the coastal area near Larvik, the site of the first recorded sea battle in Norwegian waters.
He was raised, however, in Brooklyn and New York, where he studied at the Pratt Institute and Columbia University. He later attended the Norwegian National School of Arts and Crafts and the National Academy of Fine Arts (both in Oslo) and learnt printmaking in Paris.
He met Picasso in France during the 1950s and piqued the interest of the Spaniard when he showed him photographs of his Betograve tests.
They first worked together on the sculpture Tête de femme (1958), a reworking of a Picasso piece originally formed in folded sheet metal. They also created a “Festivals Frieze” on the facade of the College of Architects of Catalonia in Barcelona – “C’est magnifique,” declared Picasso – and erected Sylvette statues, portraying Picasso’s ponytailed muse, Lydia Sylvette David, in New York and Rotterdam.
Nesjar was inspired by nature – rocks, water, ice, fire, snow – aspects that were evident in his fountain sculptures at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm and Lake Placid in the US. “The irritating thing about water is that you can push it up, but it always comes down,” he said. “It would be so wonderful to make a fountain where you could start with a jet of water, and it would rise, just rise and rise. Can you imagine how beautiful?”
He also worked extensively as a painter, moving stylistically from an expressive naturalism executed in muted colours to complete abstraction. His more esoteric interests were also manifest in a series of photographs and experimental films.
In 2014 the Norwegian government announced that one of the government blocks in Oslo, featuring works by Nesjar and Picasso, would be demolished due to bomb damage. “The art,” said Jan Tore Sanner, the Norwegian minister for local government and modernisation, “will, of course, be taken care of. These are the most important artworks, and we’re concerned that they are safeguarded.” It was speculated that the works would be moved to a museum or integrated into another government building. “I can’t understand how they can do this,” Nesjar said last year. A campaign has begun to retain the works in situ.
Nesjar lived in an artists’ residence at Bøler in Oslo where he continued to work until the end of his life.
Carl Nesjar was married for a period in the 1950s to Inger Sitter, another renowned Norwegian artist, who died in March. He married, secondly, Silvia Antoniou, who survives him. Carl Nesjar, born July 6 1920, died May 23 2015