Painted on both sides. Label on the reverse: “The signature placed in the middle of the reverse of the painting is written by the artist Ejler Bille in Ørby Saturday 2 August 1986”. Certified by Robert Dahlmann Olsen.

Exhibited: Nikolaj Kunstbygning, Copenhagen, 1981–82, cat. no. 5. Exhibited: “Surrealismen i Danmark”, Statens Museum for Kunst, Oct.-Nov. 1986, cat. no. 10. The same exhibition shown at Aarhus Kunstmuseum, Jan.-feb. 1987. Exhibited: “De skjulte Cobraer”, Randers Kunstmuseum, 13 May - 27 July 1997, cat. no. 2. Provenance: The collection of Robert Dahlmann Olsen.

Literature: Richard Mortensen, “Den abstrakte kunst i Danmark 1934”, in “The Seasons”, no. 3, Oct. 1941, p. 91–93.

In the essay Mortensen is describing the very painting by Bille as a typical and yet rare work from the earliest years of the Danish abstract movement. He points out the debt to painters like Klee, Kandinsky and Miró and emphasizes in his analysis the interplay between lines which allows the single elements to combine into not just one but many different wholes and figurative unities: “Almost as if in a game of chess, the eye must move its piece from shape to shape, creating situation after situation, whole after whole: A merry game, a game of fools, a tragic game. Playing this game, you enter the meadows of poetry”. Mortensen ends his essay as follows: “The figurative understanding which finds expression in this painting, is an innovation in ”Abstract“ Art and since this figurative understanding is created by a group of artists, you could rightly speak of a specific Danish school of Abstract Art as early as 1933–34”.

The innovative group of artists Mortensen is referring to consists of himself and Ejler Bille as well as Wilhelm Freddie and Vilhelm Bjerke Petersen. Inspired by the international modernism in France and Germany, they each cultivated their own imagery which showed many common features. The same group was behind the abstract surrealist periodical “The Line”.