LIVING FREE

Kirsten Lockenwitz & Knud Hvidberg

Kurateret af Maria Kjær Themsen

28. marts - 06. juni, 2026

Foto: Malle Madsen

(english below)

Det som gør kunst dybt vedkommende, er ånd! skriver Kirsten Lockenwitz i en tekst om, hvad kunsten fundamental set er, gør og kan. I samme tekst citerer hun sin livsmakker Knud Hvidberg:

Hvad er det der sker? Der har intet spøgelse været mellem mig og mit lærred og mine farver. Hvad er det så, som gør det? Som rammer??

Det er ånd! svarer Kirsten.

LIVING FREE viser værker af Kirsten Lockenwitz og Knud Hvidberg – to kunstnere, der fra midten af 1960erne levede og arbejdede tæt sammen. Deres praksisser udviklede sig parallelt gennem flere årtier og udspringer af en fælles undersøgelse af kunstens evne til at skabe forbindelse til bevidstheden, til ånden.

Da jeg i januar sidste år besøgte Kirsten i den gamle skole i Lov ikke langt fra Vordingborg, hvor hun de sidste 30 år af sit liv boede og arbejdede, kaldte hun Knud for en ’herlig gøgler’ og sin ’livsmakker’. Det er første gang siden 1998, at de to igen udstiller sammen.

Udstillingen præsenterer malerier fra private samlinger, heriblandt værker, der ikke har været vist offentligt siden 1970’erne. Ambitionen er at genintroducere et kunstnerpar, hvis arbejde indskriver sig i nogle af de mest interessante krydsfelter i dansk efterkrigsmodernisme.

Kunsthistorisk bevæger Lockenwitz og Hvidbergs praksisser sig mellem flere samtidige strømninger. På den ene side viderefører de modernismens interesse for den rene form og den non-figurative billedflade, som den blev formuleret i kredsen omkring Linien II. På den anden side er deres arbejde beslægtet med 1960’ernes mere eksperimenterende kunstmiljøer, hvor grænserne mellem kunstformer blev udfordret, og hvor kunstens sociale og erkendelsesmæssige potentiale blev genovervejet.

Denne dobbelte orientering kom også til udtryk i deres egne initiativer. I 1965 organiserede de udstillingen POEX 65, senere fulgt af POEX 70, hvor billedkunstnere, musikere og digtere arbejdede side om side i en radikal fællesudstilling.

En væsentlig dimension i begge kunstneres arbejde var samtidig deres engagement i spirituel praksis. Fra 1970 blev de en del af miljøet omkring Swami Narayanananda i Gylling, og interessen for meditation og bevidsthedsudvidende arbejde blev en tydelig resonansbund i deres kunst. Inspiration fra tantriske symbolsystemer og yantraer kan spores i flere af Knud Hvidbergs værker på udstillingen med deres særlige strukturer, rytmer og optiske dynamik, mens Kirstens Lockenwitz’ enkle maleri LIGHT TRACES (Jivan Mukta) (The Living Free) (Saintly Traces) er dedikeret til den befriede sjæl, på sanskrit kaldet Jivanmukti.

Kunstnernes esoteriske indsigt kan også bevidnes lokalt i Vordingborg i en permanent udsmykning, der har dannet ramme om hundredvis af lokale unges uddannelsesforløb. På Vordingborg Uddannelsescenter skabte Hvidberg i 1985 en omfattende permanent udsmykning, hvor kantinens  søjler blev beklædt med guld og farvet akryl og transformeret til ornamentale strukturer, der minder om totempæle, og hvor guldmasker og lykkehjul vidner om det, som Lockenwitz kaldte det ’gøglede’ ved Hvidberg. Udsmykningen står fortsat i sin oprindelige form, og i forbindelse med udstillingen arrangeres en vandring til stedet, hvor også flere værker af Kirsten Lockenwitz kan opleves. 

Lockenwitz og Hvidberg arbejdede i dialog med internationale strømninger som minimalisme, Op Art og Light and Space, men deres værker fastholder samtidig en særlig position i dansk kunsthistorie, hvor modernistisk formundersøgelse møder spirituel praksis.

LIVING FREE peger på dette fælles projekt: en kunst, der ikke blot organiserer form og farve, men søger at aktivere perceptionen – og åbne et rum mellem billede, krop og bevidsthed.

- Maria Kjær Themsen

Kirsten Lockenwitz (1932–2025) blev uddannet på Kunstakademiets Skole for Mur- og Rumkunst hos professorerne Niels Lergaard og Dan Sterup-Hansen. De sidste 30 år af sit liv boede og arbejde hun i en tidligere landsbyskole i Lov, nær Vordingborg. Lockenwitz debuterede på Kunstnernes Efterårsudstilling i 1959. Fra slutningen af 1960’erne arbejdede hun med relieffer og skulpturer i materialer som akryl, neon, bronze og granit, og fra 1986 skabte hun en række markante offentlige udsmykninger, bl.a ved Den Sorte Diamant. Lockenwitz var medlem af kunstnersammenslutningen Den Frie. Hun modtog Eckersberg Medaljen i 1986, Thorvaldsens Medalje i 2000 og Carl Nielsen og Anne Marie Carl-Nielsens Legat i 2002. I de senere år oplevede hendes værk fornyet opmærksomhed gennem flere udstillinger, bl.a. hos galleriet Bianca d’Alessandro. Hendes værker findes blandt andet i samlingerne på KUNSTEN, Brandts og SMK.

Knud Hvidberg (1927–1986) var autodidakt kunstner og arbejdede i forlængelse af den konkrete kunst. Han boede det meste af sit liv i København. En længere rejse til Indien i 1967 blev afgørende for hans formsprog, og et senere studieophold i Rom styrkede hans arbejde med ornamentik og bladguld. Hvidberg interesserede sig gennem hele sit virke for hellige symbolsystemer. Det førte ham gennem flere kunstneriske perioder, hvor han blandt andet arbejdede med inspiration fra inkakulturen, rastafarikulturen samt yantraer og mandalaer fra den tantriske og yogiske tradition. Både Hvidberg og Lockenwitz var en del af det spirituelle miljø i Gylling omkring den indiske guru Swami Narayanananda. Hans værker findes blandt andet i samlingerne på KUNSTEN, Randers Kunstmuseum, HEART, SMK og Brandts.

Maria Kjær Themsen (f. 1978) er kurator og kunstkritiker, og har siden 2016 været bosat i Vordingborg. Hun arbejder som kunstredaktør ved Dagbladet Information, og har siden begyndelsen af 2000’erne skrevet om samtidskunst for danske og internationale aviser og magasiner. Parallelt med sit kritiske arbejde har hun kurateret en række udstillinger, heriblandt Soil.Sickness.Society, som i 2021 modtog Bikubenfondens Visionspris. I mange år har hun beskæftiget sig med esoteriske strømningers betydning for den vestlige modernisme – et emne, hun vil udfolde i et foredrag under udstillingsperioden. Hun har selv praktiseret yoga siden midten af 1990’erne og undervist siden 2009, med en særlig interesse for den tantriske tradition. Maria Kjær Themsen har skrevet flere bøger om samtidskunst, og er forfatter til den anmelderroste bog Berørt – om dansk kunst i det nye årtusinde og arbejder aktuelt på en ny bog om den ældste generation af kvindelige kunstnere i Danmark, heriblandt Kirsten Lockenwitz. Hun sidder i en række udvalg og bestyrelser og er fra januar 2026 forperson for Vordingborg Billedkunstråd.

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LIVING FREE

Kirsten Lockenwitz & Knud Hvidberg

Curated by Maria Kjær Themsen

March 28 - June 06, 2026

Photo: Malle Madsen

What makes art deeply relevant is spirit!, writes Kirsten Lockenwitz in a text about what art fundamentally is, does, and can be. In the same text she quotes her partner, Knud Hvidberg:

What’s going on? No ghost has come between me and my canvas and my paints. So what is it, then, that does this—what is it that touches me?

It is spirit! Kirsten replies.

LIVING FREE presents works by Kirsten Lockenwitz and Knud Hvidberg—two artists who, from the mid-1960s onwards, lived and worked closely together. Their practices developed in parallel over several decades and emerge from a shared investigation of art’s capacity to create a connection to the consciousness, to the spirit.

When I visited Kirsten in January last year in the old schoolhouse in Lov, not far from Vordingborg—where she lived and worked during the last thirty years of her life—she called Knud a ‘wonderful juggler’ and her ‘life partner’. This is the first time since 1998 that the two are exhibiting together again.

The exhibition presents paintings from private collections, including works that have not been shown publicly since the 1970s. The ambition is to reintroduce an artist couple whose work occupies some of the most interesting intersections in Danish postwar modernism.

Art historically, the practices of Lockenwitz and Hvidberg move between several concurrent currents. On the one hand, they continue modernism’s interest in pure form and the non-figurative picture plane, as it was articulated in the circle around Linien II. On the other hand, their work is related to the more experimental art environments of the 1960s, where the boundaries between art forms were challenged and the social and cognitive potential of art was reconsidered.

This dual orientation was also expressed through their own initiatives. In 1965 they organised the exhibition POEX 65, later followed by POEX 70, where visual artists, musicians, and poets worked side by side in a radical collective exhibition.

An important dimension in both artists’ work was their engagement with spiritual practice. From 1970 they became part of the milieu around Swami Narayanananda in Gylling, and their interest in meditation and consciousness-expanding practices became a clear resonant foundation in their art. Inspiration from tantric symbolic systems and yantras can be traced in several of Knud Hvidberg’s works in the exhibition, with their particular structures, rhythms, and optical dynamism, while Kirsten Lockenwitz’s simple painting LIGHT TRACES (Jivan Mukta) (The Living Free) (Saintly Traces) is dedicated to the liberated soul, in Sanskrit called Jivanmukti.

The artists’ esoteric insights can also be witnessed locally in Vordingborg in a permanent public commission that has formed the setting for hundreds of local young people’s educational paths. At Vordingborg Education Centre, Hvidberg created an extensive permanent commission in 1985, where the cafeteria’s columns were clad in gold and coloured acrylic and transformed into ornamental structures reminiscent of totem poles, while golden masks and wheels of fortune testify to what Lockenwitz called the “juggling” aspect of Hvidberg. The commission still stands in its original form, and in connection with the exhibition a walk to the site will be arranged, where several works by Kirsten Lockenwitz also can be experienced.

Lockenwitz and Hvidberg worked in dialogue with international movements such as minimalism, Op Art, and Light and Space, yet their works simultaneously maintain a distinctive position in Danish art history, where modernist investigations of form meet spiritual practice.

LIVING FREE points to this shared project: an art that not only organises form and colour, but seeks to activate perception—and to open a space between image, body, and consciousness.

- Maria Kjær Themsen

Kirsten Lockenwitz (1932–2025) studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Mural and Spatial Art, under the professors Niels Lergaard and Dan Sterup-Hansen. For the last three decades of her life, she lived and worked in a former village school in Lov, near Vordingborg. Lockenwitz made her debut at Kunstnernes Efterårsudstilling (The Artists’ Autumn Exhibition) in 1959. From the late 1960s onwards, she developed a body of reliefs and sculptures in materials such as acrylic, neon, bronze, and granite. From 1986, she realized a series of notable public commissions, including works for the Black Diamond in Copenhagen. She was a member of the artists’ association Den Frie. Among her distinctions are the Eckersberg Medal (1986), the Thorvaldsen Medal (2000), and the Carl Nielsen and Anne Marie Carl-Nielsen Grant (2002). In recent years, her work has received renewed attention through several exhibitions, among others at the gallery Bianca d’Alessandro. Her works are represented in the collections of KUNSTEN Museum of Modern Art Aalborg, Brandts, and the National Gallery of Denmark (SMK), among others.

Knud Hvidberg (1927–1986) was a self-taught artist whose practice evolved in dialogue with Concrete art. He lived most of his life in Copenhagen. A prolonged journey to India in 1967 proved formative for the development of his visual language, while a later stay in Rome deepened his engagement with ornamentation and the use of gold leaf. Throughout his career, Hvidberg maintained a sustained interest in sacred symbolic systems. This inquiry unfolded across several artistic phases, during which he drew inspiration from sources including Inca culture, Rastafarian culture, and the yantras and mandalas of tantric and yogic traditions. Both Hvidberg and Lockenwitz were connected to the spiritual milieu in Gylling that formed around the Indian guru Swami Narayanananda. His works are held in the collections of KUNSTEN Museum of Modern Art Aalborg, Randers Kunstmuseum, HEART – Herning Museum of Contemporary Art, the National Gallery of Denmark (SMK), and Brandts, among others.

Maria Kjær Themsen (b. 1978) is a curator and art critic based in Vordingborg since 2016. She works as arts editor at the Danish newspaper Dagbladet Information and has written on contemporary art for Danish and international newspapers and magazines since the early 2000s. Alongside her critical work, she has curated numerous exhibitions, including Soil.Sickness.Society, which received the Bikuben Foundation Vision Award in 2021. For many years, her research has focused on the significance of esoteric currents within Western modernism — a subject she will address in a lecture during the exhibition period. She has practiced yoga since the mid-1990s and has been teaching since 2009, and has a particular interest in the tantric tradition. Maria Kjær Themsen is the author of several books on contemporary art, including the critically acclaimed Berørt: On Danish Art in the New Millennium. She is currently working on a new book about the earliest generation of women artists in Denmark, among them Kirsten Lockenwitz. She serves on a number of committees and boards and, as of January 2026, is chair of the Vordingborg Visual Arts Council.

Exhibition view, If copy, then value, 2025