SPECTA

Over the summer, SPECTA presents a series of works by Poul Pedersen.

Poul Pedersen became known as the 'Letter Painter' after his long project "The Stolen Alphabet" and a larger number of works where words and play with the components of words, the letters, were a sharp focus.
Throughout his career, Poul Pedersen has painted a series of portraits. Again, it was the play with letters as a series of signs that was in focus, and thus a portrait of, for example, Hanne, was a painting that simply consisted of a composition of the letters of the name. Poul Pedersen's portraits have almost always been portraits of women. An exception is the work TRIP-TY-KON. Portrait of F.B. (Frances Bacon), which can also be seen in this summer's feature. Here, across three canvases, the typography stands as very tightly painted letters that dissolve downwards. As a combination of Poul Pedersen's own clear painted letters and a more dissolved, almost liquid style.
Poul Pedersen was born in Denmark, but lived and worked in Paris since the 1970s. He was a member of the Danish artists association Den Frie.
From 1996, Poul Pedersen received the Danish Arts Foundation's Honorary Grant, and in 2007 he was awarded the Eckersberg Medal and in 2020 the Thorvaldsen Medal, both awarded by the Academy Council. Poul Pedersen was represented by SPECTA for more than 30 years.

Poul Pedersen passed away at the end of February 2026, at the age of 92.

*** Please note, that in July, we will be on holyday, and the gallery will be open by appointment only ***

Come by to see selected works by the late Poul Pedersen before July!

Until July, you may be offered chilled white wine on sunny summer afternoons .....

This is a rare chance to see some of the works by Poul Pedersen, who sadly passed away in February earlier this year.

Poul Pedersen was born in Denmark, but lived and worked in Paris since the 1970s. He was a member of the Danish artists association Den Frie.
From 1996, Poul Pedersen received the Danish Arts Foundation's Honorary Grant, and in 2007 he was awarded the Eckersberg Medal and in 2020 the Thorvaldsen Medal, both awarded by the Academy Council. Poul Pedersen was represented by SPECTA for more than 30 years.

Over the summer, SPECTA presents a series of works by Poul Pedersen.

The painter Poul Pedersen painted letters. Poul Pedersen originally worked as a house and sign painter, but in the 1960s he became part of a group of avant-garde artists in Aarhus and began working as an artist. One of Poul Pedersen's absolute masterpieces is The Stolen Alphabet. Over a number of years, Poul Pedersen sought out famous paintings to – at times with great public attention – copy letters onto a canvas. An A from a painting by Picasso, an H from Robert Rauschenberg, a P from Mondrian, a Q from Asger Jorn, etc. 24 years after starting this theft, Poul Pedersen completed the series, 25 letters, and he then donated the entire The Stolen Alphabet to the State Library in Aarhus, DK. As Poul Pedersen said, the painters had stolen the letters from the writers, and now he had stolen them from the painters and sent them back to live among the books.

In his work Fowal (2013), Poul Pedersen has quoted from the Danish poet Johannes V. Jensen’s poem from 1906 with the same title. Each letter is painted on its own canvas - a total of 36 canvases - and the typography is from his own The Stolen Alphabet.

Poul Pedersen was born in Denmark, but lived and worked in Paris since the 1970s. He was a member of the Danish artists association Den Frie.
From 1996, Poul Pedersen received the Danish Arts Foundation's Honorary Grant, and in 2007 he was awarded the Eckersberg Medal and in 2020 the Thorvaldsen Medal, both awarded by the Academy Council.
Poul Pedersen was represented by SPECTA for more thsn 30 years.

Poul Pedersen passed away at the end of February 2026, at the age of 92.

Throwback to 2004:

"YOU ARE HERE"
When an architect presents an idea for a building, a scale model is typically used to demonstrate the architectural concept. The interplay between context and form defines the architectural model, and people play only a secondary role.

"You Are Here" turns the purpose of the architectural model upside down. Instead of focusing on the building and its relationship to the surroundings, the model concentrates on the building's occupants, and their lives are exhibited in 220 consecutive windows.

The figures in the building are inspired by pictograms - stereotypical figures in stereotypical apartments - normally used in architecture to represent direction, "WC", "dining", "parking", etc.
In "You are here", these pictograms no longer represent the purely formal and abstract; instead, they create a series of highly personal characters that unfold all facets of human nature, good and bad.

"You are here" is a drama that mixes the uneventful everyday with the absurd, with humor and seriousness, love and death. The underlying idea of the installation comments on or critiques the convention that the architectural model should be devoid of life and inhabited by sterile, odorless robots. By utilizing the same architectural language with cheerful exaggeration, the artwork reveals a building inhabited by flesh-and-blood human beings.

Remembering both Lars Arrhenius and Jens Holm today, both of them are very missed..

The installation "You Are Here" was made by artist Lars Arrhenius and architect Jens Holm. It was one of 7 exhibitions in the exhibition project Box 2.0 - Art and Archtecture in collaboration, 2004-05.

📸 by Anders Sune Berg

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This week we are preparing our Summer Feature: POUL PEDERSEN, PARIS.

In February we said goodbye to Poul Pedersen.
Poul was a much loved artist and friend and represented by SPECTA for more than 30 years. We enjoyed his brilliant mindset, his amazing words and letters turned into wonderful arworks and of course the great company he was.

This summer, a selecrion of his works can be seen in SPECTA.
Stay tuned for more.

SPECTA is open today - until 17:30!
Tomorrow is the lst day of our group exhibition "PEOPLE"!

We are now in the last week of "People".
Don't miss out on your chance to catch it!

New hanging in our Viewing room! Come by, open till 14:00 today.