Karl Bovin

Karl (Kalle) Christian Bovin (1907–1985) was a Danish painter who specialized in landscapes of Odsherred in the north west of Zealand. In the 1930s, he became the central member of the artists' colony known as the Odsherred Painters and was one of the founding members of the Corner artists association.

Biography

Born in Frederikshavn, Bovin was the eldest son of a stone mason. He was interested in art from an early age. In the 1920s, he cycled to the artists paradise Skagen in the north of Jutland to show Anna and Michael Ancher some of his early work. As a result of their encouragement, he attended the Royal Danish Academy of Art in Copenhagen from 1928 to 1931 where he studied under Sigurd Wandel and Aksel Jørgensen. Here he came together with a group of constructivists who relied largely on intuition and observation but was not happy with their approach.

He therefore joined fellow artist Kaj Ejstrup in Odsherred where there were excellent opportunities to concentrate on nature and landscape painting. Slowly other artists followed, forming the so-called Odsherredsmalerne (Odsherred Painters) who founded the Corner painters association. In 1932, Bovin was successful in having one of his landscapes bought by Statens Museum for Kunst, the Danish national gallery, reinforcing his reputation. In the early 1930s, he also spent some time with the Funen Painters, especially Johannes Larsen and Fritz Syberg establishing a relationship between the two artists' colonies.

Painting styles

His earlier paintings are characterised by dull tones, no doubt influenced by the woes of the times. However, by the end of the 1930s, his paintings became livelier. He specialized in landscapes, producing works which often had a high horizon and excelled in conveying the changing weather conditions encountered in Odsherred. Several of his early works depict scenes of winter and autumn with ploughed fields and the occasional farm building. Later he adopted a lighter palette and painted summer scenes, often comparable to those of the Funen Painters. A period he spent in Skagen in the mid-1950s contributed to his rather sketchy manner of painting with stronger and more brilliant colour. After travelling to Bahrein with the archaeologist P.V. Glob in the 1950s and 1960s, his paintings benefited from even more colour and brightness. Indeed, he found he could better represent these effects in watercolours than in oils. Though closely involved with the impressionists, he continued to develop his own style and motifs with the result that he became one of the best landscape painters of the 20th century, painting his natural surroundings in winter, summer and spring.

Bovin continued to paint until the 1970s, when poor health prevented him from continuing further. Much of his work can be seen at Odsherreds Museum of Art but the largest collection of all, some 120 items, is at Frederikshavn Art Museum.

Family

Bovin first married the artist Amy Victoria Krog-Jensen in 1934. After the marriage had been dissolved in 1951 he married the painter Bertha (Birthe) Marie Marensine Pedersen in 1952. Known as Birthe Bovin, she also painted watercolours and oils of the Odsherred landscape.

Literature

• Fabritius, Elisabeth (2007). Danish Artists' Colonies: The Skagen Painters, the Funen Painters, the Bornholm Painters, the Odsherred Painters. Skagens Museum. ISBN 978-87-88686-39-5. 
• Flugt, Tommy (2011). Tidsskrift for Kunst 2011 #2: Tidsskrift om Odsherreds Kunstmuseum, Malergården og Huset i Asnæs (in Danish). Aurora. 
• Granhøj Jørgensen, Hardy (2013). Modernisme midt i naturen Odsherredsmalerne. Museum Odsherred, Kunstmuseet i Asnæs. ISBN 978-87-993053-1-5.