Franciska Clausen

“It seems almost unique that a female Danish Cubist is soon exhibiting in Paris ... in fact, I have the impression that I am the only real one.”

Franciska Clausen (1899–1986) belonged to an exclusive circle of Danish artists whose stars shone particularly brightly. She left Denmark at a tender age to pursue more radical and advanced artistic endeavours abroad. 

For more than 15 years, she resided partly in Berlin and partly in Paris, where she was an apprentice and received tuition, first from the Hungarian artist Lázlo Maholo-Nagy and later from Fernand Léger. At the same time, she left a weighty and independent imprint as inspiration for several of the great Modernist masters, and inspired by Piet Mondrian’s Neoplasticism, she found her own mode of expression with the circle as the dominant visual element. She was a member of the international artist group Cercle et Carré, but after its dissolution in 1931 returned home to Aabenraa. Due to a lack of appreciation of her art, she instead devoted herself to a bread-and-butter job as a naturalistic portrait painter.

During her lifetime Franciska Clausen achieved great international recognition, while fame quite undeservedly eluded her in Denmark. Today, she is considered one of our most significant avant-garde artists with her clear and powerful expression, marked by the Constructivists’ belief in harmony and freedom, and Franciska Clausen is therefore more relevant today than ever before. In 2022, she was represented at a major solo exhibition at ARoS, and her works are found at several museums and in private collections in Denmark and abroad.