Jan Groth

Jan Groth is widely recognized for his monumental tapestries, executed with his former wife Benedikte Groth; a dynamic collaboration that lasted for more than 40 years. His core medium is still however considered to be drawing, and from the late 1980s he expanded his range of media to include sculpture. During his long artistic practise he has, with great consequence, explored and defined the line and its relation to the picture plane; the white line against the black in his textile works, the black crayon contrasting the white paper in his drawings and the sculpted dark patinated bronzes against the gallery wall. Jan Groth’s works literally weaves together the immediate with the gradual; the drawing on paper extracted in an instance is through a highly labour-intensive process transcribed into the structure of the tapestry. His artistic language can be described as restrained expressionism, always with a profound sensibility wherein the line’s seemingly seismographic recordings appear to visualize nuances and energies registered from deep within the artist.

Considered the foremost Norwegian artist of his generation, Groth has had a prolific production and an extensive exhibition history, not least in the USA where he also taught at The School of Visual Arts in New York, between the years 1982-1994. In the 1970s post-minimal art scene in New York, his international career started with a series of exhibitions at the legendary Betty Parsons Gallery, and in 1986 he was honoured with a mid-career retrospective at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. The extensive monograph “Signs” by Karin Hellandsjø was published on the occasion of a comprehensive retrospective at the National Museum in Oslo in 2001. His latest presentation in Sweden was the 1986 exhibition: “Jan Groth, Drawings 1975-1985” at Moderna Museet in Stockholm. Groth's work is included in countless permenant collections including in The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, The Museum of Modern Art in New York, The Art Inistute of Chicago, National Gallery of Art in Washington, Louisina Museum of Modern Art in Denmark, Musée des Beaux Arts in Montreal, Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, The Tate Gallery in London, and Whitney Museum of American Art in New York along with others.  

Courtesy of Galleri Riis