Objects of the elements : the art of Elsa Thoresen / David F. Martin.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Thoresen, Elsa, 1906-1994, artist.

Martin, David F. (David Francis), 1953- author.

Contributor:

Cascadia Art Museum, publisher, host institution.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Thoresen, Elsa, 1906-1994--Exhibitions.

Thoresen, Elsa.

Surrealism--Exhibitions.

Surrealism.

Genre:

exhibition catalogs.

Exhibition catalogs.

Physical Description:

160 pages : illustrations ; 30 cm

Distribution:

[Seattle, Washington] : distributed by University of Washington Press

Place of Publication:

Edmonds, Washington : Cascadia Art Museum, [2025]

Summary:

"Elsa Thoresen (1906-1994), born in Minnesota to Norwegian immigrant parents, studied at the School of Arts and Crafts and the Academy of Fine Arts in Oslo and at the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Brussels. After marrying Danish artist Vilhelm Bjerke Petersen in 1935, she began working in a surrealist style that brought her recognition in Europe. She was one of only a few women to be included in the International Surrealist Exhibition of 1938 in Paris. André Breton reproduced Thoresen's Atmospheric Landscape (1936) in his Abridged Dictionary of Surrealism, published for the exhibition. Elsa became friends with several prominent European surrealists, including Sophie Taeuber-Arp. In 1938 Taeuber-Arp reproduced Thoresen's Abstrakt komposition in the magazine Plastique, which she served as editor. Aside from a brief stay in Paris in 1938, Elsa and Vilhelm lived in Denmark from 1935 until 1944, when the couple and their children relocated to Sweden. There, they befriended and worked alongside the Swedish Halmstad Group of modernist and avant-garde painters. After World War II, the couple spent time in the United States before returning to Sweden in 1947. That year, Thoresen's work was included in the International Exhibition of Surrealism, organized by Marcel Duchamp, André Breton, and Aimé Maeght at the Maeght Gallery in Paris. Elsa and Vilhelm divorced in 1953. She remarried and relocated to Seattle, where she focused her painting on lyrical, biomorphic abstractions until her death in 1994" -- Distributor's website, viewed February 24, 2026.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 57-59).

Objects of the elements: the art of Elsa Thoresen is published in conjunction with an exhibition of the same name, organized by Cascadia Art Museum and on view from December 3, 2025, through March 8, 2026.

ISBN:

0998911275

9780998911274

OCLC:

1517608976