Artwork Details

Flowers for the people – that’s how, with four little words, you could epitomize Poul Gernes’ artistic achievement and particularly his graphic output.

Naturally, that would be simplifying the story of one of Denmark’s most versatile and prolific artists. However, Gernes himself was yearning to simplify the artistic expression, to boil it down to what he regarded as its fundamental elements – colour and form, and their effect on the individual and on society as a whole. 

Gernes had a vision that art ought to enrich the everyday lives of ordinary people. To him, the artist was “a servant” of society, no more and no less, whose job it was to decorate our shared environment and beautify our surroundings. Throughout his life, Gernes was faithful to this vision, resulting in him doing more than 150 artistic in situ decorations in Denmark. In addition, he generated a large output of graphic works, most of which were printed at Eks-Skolens Trykkeri.
 

Both in his in situ decorations – which can still be seen at many of the nation’s schools, hospitals, universities and nursing homes – and in his graphic prints, the central motif often consists of simple geometric forms or stylized flowers, leaves and stems in bright colours, which meander playfully across surfaces but they are always subject to a compositional rigour. 

The decorations were often executed with the aid of simple paper stencils and the diligent work of many hands – a method akin to the graphic techniques. 

Gernes’ sumptuous graphic images testify to an uncommonly consistent artistic vision and simultaneously stand as a tribute to the salient character of graphic art, where harmonic variations on a theme – as in Bach’s fugues – constitute the very essence of expression. An example of this can be seen in Gernes’ last published graphic series from 1984, where he succeeded in creating 20 different images of the same motif, simply by printing in different colour schemes, both positive and negative. You can just open your eyes and listen.

In his graphic works, Gernes advanced the artistic possibilities of the ornament. He frequently made use of the offset technique because it offered the possibility of using simple means to create many variations of an image. 
 

Graphic art, moreover, has a democratic aspect, in that images can be produced quickly and cheaply and be dispersed far and wide. This jibed neatly with Gernes’ conviction – that the role of art is to beautify our public spaces, and it is the artist’s task to make sure that it is done properly. For Gernes, the aesthetic was always inextricably conjoined with the ethical.

Poul Gernes’ artistic achievement from the 1960s until his death in 1996 stands as a tribute to the ornament as a life-affirming humanistic expression.