Lot 238: - Kenneth Blom , Norwegian b. 1967 Sørkedalen 2 oil on canvas

signed K.Blom lower right; dated 2008 on the reverse oil on canvas

140 by 160cm., 55 by 63in.

Blom's landscapes such as the present work reveal the influence of the emotive, lachrymose and heavily atmospheric qualities in the paintings of fellow Norwegian Edvard Munch. Both Blom's figurative works and landscapes explore the expression of melancholy, a preoccupation of Norwegian artists through the ages.

Blom was born in 1967 in Roskilde, Denmark, but moved to Norway as a child and attended the Statens Kunstakademi in Oslo, studying afterwards at the Düsseldorf Academy of Fine Arts. The conflict between figurative and conceptual art remains an idée fixe in the career of the artist, and he has oscillated between a stripped-down, industrial minimalism inspired by Joseph Beuys and Dan Flavin, the stark, representational moodiness of Munch and the photographic exactitude of Gerhard Richter, imbued with a trenchant social conscience.