Decoration Details

Decoration -mobile

Decoration

Present name

Town, country

Gentofte, Denmark

Description

interior | colour scheme | floor decoration | the whole school, including the large hall, lockers, cloakrooms, classrooms, corridors, stairways and floors

Completed

2006

Status

partially preserved

Removed

2015

Done by

Poul Gernes, Aase Seidler Gernes

IDname

PG-Z-74

Notes

The decoration was started during Poul Gernes' lifetime, but delayed due to his death in 1996. Aase Seidler Gernes continued the work alone, and the extensive color scheme was completed in 2006.

Shortly after it was painted over in 2015, there was a wish to recreate it. The restored stairwell was inaugurated in 2021.

Anthology

Finn Thybo Andersen on Gentofte School

The project was initiated in 1994, when Birgitte Kann Rasmussen, formerly school principal at Nexø School took up the same position at Gentofte School. In the course of the work, Poul Gernes died. Aase continued, and the final colour schemes were added in 2006.

Here at Gentofte School was one of their principal works: The monumental main staircase which climbed three floors next to the large open hall. Here, stairs, railings, coloured linoleum, panels and radiators were composed in a colour symphony that lifted art history to a higher dimension. It didn’t matter where you turned -- everywhere were interesting new angles and details. It was insanely handsome.

But Gernes’ colours divide the waters. When I visited, the staff was not wild about them. “It is unbearable with all those colours,” they said. In 2016 we learned that the whole thing had been painted over. A great site-specific work in Danish art has ceased to exist.

Finn Thybo Andersen: Poul Gernes Decoration Projects. London 2018, p. 227. Translated by Dan A. Marmorstein. Excerpt.