The Henie Onstad Art Centre has acquired various collections of work by individual artists, built up in close collaboration with the artists themselves. They are usually the culmination of contact and exhibition activity over an extended period. This is certainly true of the comprehensive collection of work by Zdenka Rusova, which has taken shape though acquisitions and gifts over a period of thirty-five years.
Zdenka Rusova (born 1939) was born and educated in Prague, came to Norway for the first time in 1967, and became a Norwegian citizen in 1974. The Art Centre’s collection of her work is important for two reasons. First, she is a significant, distinguished artist; and second, her artistic practice has brought new and valuable perspectives to the art life of Norway – elements from a central European tradition that were relatively unknown and unrecognized in this country.
The Art Centre’s first director, Ole Henrik Moe, wrote the following about the artist:
An incredible strength must lie within this person, who, coming from the heart of central Europe, with a multi-cultural background, transplanted herself with such consummate ease into a much narrower, Scandinavian milieu.
I met her for the first time in 1966, at a gallery for young artists in Prague, where she was exhibiting abstract etchings of women’s heads. The originality and the power of her work struck me immediately. She came to Norway – of her own accord, steered by intuition alone – a couple of years later, and moved here permanently in 1970. She brought with her a rich central European cultural heritage, a strong talent for drawing and printmaking, and an almost boundless energy. She was a welcome, exotic element, and came to enrich Norwegian art and cultural life over the course of the years. She continued to work in the style she brought with her from Prague: her printmaking and, perhaps even more forcefully, her drawings bear witness to this. She worked singlemindedly with one particular technique, managing to combine feminine tenderness with masculine aggressiveness. Her motifs always centre on humans – aspects of the body became gradually more stylized, yet the characteristic organic and sensual quality of her work remains in view.
In the last analysis, it is her identity as a woman and an artist that lies at the heart of her creative output. This was no doubt a difficult journey – one that caused her intense inner struggle and intellectual unrest. She has found and chosen her national identity – we now consider her a staunch Norwegian.
It was almost inevitable that an individual with her energy and potential would come to play such a significant role in Norway. Luckily for us, she became interested in the teaching of art, and was a professor at the Academy of Fine Art in Oslo for many years.
Her first exhibition at the Henie Onstad Art Centre was held in 1971, and since then she has had many further exhibitions here. She continues to maintain the importance the Art Centre has had for her, but this is reciprocal. She has always been an active, stimulating element in our midst. Europe has come a little closer to us because of her.
(Ole Henrik Moe, in the exhibition catalogue Zdenka Rusova. Drawings 1963–93, Høvikodden: Henie Onstad Art Centre, 1998.)
Zdenka Rusova taught at several of Norway’s Art Academies for many years. She was also rector of the Academy of Fine Art in Oslo from 1987 to 1992, and was the first woman in Norway to be appointed to this position. Her work at these institutions left a lasting impression, and offered a valuable stimulus to Norwegian art life. This is another reason why her art should be available to the public in this country, at the Henie Onstad Art Centre. The collection consists of a comprehensive selection of her drawings, prints and paintings – several hundred artworks that span all the phases of her wide-ranging oeuvre. In style, they encompass her earliest, naturalistic work with surrealistic undertones from her time in Czechoslovakia, to her later, more abstract creations. This might be termed a research collection – a special collection that shows the diversity of the Art Centre’s catchment areas. It also exemplifies the links between the national and international art scene.
The essay is taken from the book The Henie Onstad Art Centre: The Art of Tomorrow Today : The Collection by Karin Hellandsjø, Torino : Skira, 2008
