Studier af bygninger. Notater 1930 - 1936

Curator: This compelling sketchbook page is entitled "Studier af bygninger. Notater," or "Studies of Buildings. Notes." It was composed by Niels Larsen Stevns between 1930 and 1936 and is held here at the SMK. Editor: Wow, it has a certain... unfinished quality to it. A peek into the artist's thought process, maybe? The pencil strokes are so tentative, like he’s feeling his way through the geometry of these imagined or remembered cityscapes. I like the raw feel. Curator: I think you're onto something. Stevns wasn't just passively recording buildings. Look closely – he's making notations, scribbling measurements and observations in the margins. It’s like a visual record intertwined with layers of interpretation, almost an early form of urban semiotics! Editor: Semiotics, huh? To me, it just whispers stories. Imagine the quiet solitude of the artist, wandering these streets, sketchbook in hand, lost in contemplation. The rough quality suggests it's the capturing of a fleeting feeling, the emotion that the buildings evoke rather than architectural precision. Curator: Right. We can explore Stevns’s fascination with the modern city in relation to the aesthetic and social anxieties of the interwar period. His urban sketches are documents of societal transformation, the growth of urban environments impacting citizens' lives and psyches. We are not simply looking at geometric figures, but a visual commentary about industrialization in Copenhagen, in Denmark, or in Europe in general. Editor: True. And there’s a universal feeling in the asymmetry of these structures, in the contrast between sharp edges and the freedom in his handwriting. It connects. These raw strokes on paper…it’s almost vulnerable. It echoes that fragile tension we all know from periods of significant societal shifts, as you put it. Curator: Ultimately, “Studier af bygninger. Notater” reveals that art can function as historical record, as social critique, and, undeniably, as emotional expression. It challenges the boundaries of those terms. Editor: Exactly! Stevns offers us both a study of architecture and a study of himself, shaped by and reacting to the world around him. What could be more enticing?