Ida Lorentzen

Over the years, Norwegian American painter Ida Lorentzen has gained a significant place in Norwegian contemporary art, and she is represented in some of the most important art museums in Norway. Lorentzen is known for her paintings of melancholic interior spaces, where the motifs are often taken from arrangements in her own studio. The various configurations of interior objects are constructed spaces, staged by the artist herself. Lorentzen’s room studies are metaphysical, with a particular focus on surfaces, straight lines, depth, space, light and the balanced use of color. Her works portray walls, floors, windows and furniture in rooms robbed of sound and human activity. They impart a state of mind, a mood, and are thus more than just rooms. Motifs where doors stand ajar against dark rooms are recurrent in Lorentzen’s paintings and refer to the inner topography of humans. In 1995, Lorentzen received the Hassam, Speicher, Betts, and Symons Purchase Fund Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.