Claus Larsen

Claus Larsen lives in Denmark, after 31 years of living in Milan, Italy. His many surprising talents, together with his ambitions, have formed the basis of a unique journey:

 

Claus Larsen is a medical doctor from the University of Copenhagen. He has been president of AEIMS, the European organization of medical and scientific illustrators and in 2009 he organized the international AEIMS congress at the Natural Science Museum in Milan. In the same year, Claus Larsen began exhibiting his art. In the following years he exhibited in many galleries in Italy and abroad and also at art fairs.

 

Larsen received the international peace prize in Art G.O.M.P.A.

 

Claus Larsen was born in 1954. He started painting early and started exhibiting in galleries in Copenhagen. At the same time, he started medical school and was trained as a doctor at the University of Copenhagen.

 

In 1987 he went to Milan and started working as a medical and scientific illustrator, thus combining his interest in art and medicine. He also began teaching medical communication.

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From the early nineties he was invited to give lectures and courses at various universities in Milan, Bologna, Lucerne and Zurich. In 2007, the publisher Zanichelli in Italy published his book "Artistic Anatomy" which makes use of digital 3D technology which enables the reader to explore the anatomy using extremely realistic three-dimensional models.

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From 2007 to 2013, Claus Larsen was president of AEIMS, the European organization for medical and scientific illustrators.

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His painting “Metamorphosis” was selected for the opening exhibition of the London 2012 Olympic Fine Arts Olympic Fine Arts under the patronage of the International Olympic Committee, supported by the Ministry of Culture of the People's Republic of China, organized together with the China Society for the Promotion of Cultural and Art Development and together with the Beijing Association for Promotion of Olympic related Culture. Artists from all over the world exhibited contemporary art here at the highest level.

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In 2013, Claus Larsen received the international peace prize in Art G.O.M.P.A. And one of his pictures was on this occasion exhibited in Monreale in Sicily.

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In 2014, his picture "The Divine Forest" was selected for the First Biennal of Creativity in Verona, Italy, and the same year also exhibited at the World Fair in Los Angeles.

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Claus Larsen belongs to the kind of artists who are able to interpret art history from front to back, as he interprets each pit stop with a new and dreamy approach and translates historical elements into a fairytale language that is convincingly current.

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Claus Larsen shows that he learned his lesson from the great masters thoroughly. With unscrupulous precision, almost like a chemist's, he manufactures his own colors exactly like the old masters. The pigments are mixed and grated to become handmade oil paints.

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It is no coincidence that Claus Larsen is also an expert in 3D graphics. A digital technician bewitched with the oldest painting techniques. Visual distortions or paradoxical effects in the style of Escher are what the artist focuses on in his ravishing imaginary visions, which often take place in a flourishing natural theater as in the picture "The Nightingale".

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His approach to painting is typically humanistic combined with scientific expertise that extends from chemistry to perspective. In addition, he integrates his knowledge of art history with a completely modern art of storytelling, which as a visual language is akin to fairy tales, myths and legends.

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In Claus Larsen's pictures, the great art from the past bursts forth and then blossoms in the form of an unequivocal tribute to one or more of the great masters, as in, for example, the picture "The Paladins". A reinterpretation of Magritte's picture "Empire of Lights" which has become a Palladio villa with illuminated windows. In his tribute to one of the greatest Italian Renaissance architects, who built Villa Capra in Vicenza, Italy, also called Villa Rotonda, the artist replaces the statues on the villa's facades with penguins and in the Italian title of the picture, "Pinguini paladini", he plays with rhythm and harmony between the birds and the name of the great architect Andrea Palladio (Palladio/Paladini), as he quite consciously introduces the current theme, namely the risk of a protected animal species becoming extinct. Those who actually had the right to be protected, the penguins, in this case become protectors, according to an inverted logic, which is typical of today's reality where the distortion and change of values is a recurrent practice to create irony.

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Nature is clearly one of Claus Larsen's primary themes. His centrality is always aesthetic even if he points to environmental degradation. His seemingly innocent figurations acquire political value the moment the viewer begins to reflect on the pressing questions of ecology and protection of the environment.

 

Through his art, he gives us a careful and detailed perception of an abnormal world, part of an extraordinary universe that only a vivid and feverish imagination is capable of creating.

Claus Larsen is a surrealist from our time, a picture puzzle expert with a special fondness for the illusion, the metaphor, but also the fairy tale. His work has several different layers of interpretation possibilities.

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Claus Larsen depicts a fantasy kingdom, a visionary zoo, where ducks, penguins and toucans fly over spiers to tell us that everything is fluid and changing and that change in nature is the only law that does not change.

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Claus Larsen paints precise and crystal clear figures and demonstrates that things are ambiguous at the same time. His ultra-precise worlds remind us that our certainty is uncertain. He renews surrealism with a rebirth, but his surrealism is in delicate and cheerful colors.

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