Literature: Ane Hejlskov Larsen: "Per Kirkeby Malerier 1957–1977, Copenhagen 2002, no. M 349 (reproduced in colours p. 296). Literature: “Per Kirkeby”, Louisiana Revy, Vol. 30, No. 3, June 1990. Literature: Birgit Hessellund and Finn Terman Frederiksen: “Hjælp! Jeg er samler. Birte Inge Christensen og John Hunov's Samlinger”, Randers, Denmark 1994, p. 26, no. 184. Provenance: The collection of Birte Inge Christensen & John Hunov, Copenhagen. Proveniens: Private colletion, Denmark.

High up in the Pyrenees is the inaccessible cave where, legend has it, Mary Magdalene spent the last 30 years of her life. Though historians have a different version of events, this is a story firmly rooted in the area’s Christian culture, and the reason why the cave remains a popular destination for pilgrimages and mythmaking. Both as a physical place and as a Christian metaphysical idea, embracing forgiveness and healing, the cave combines two standpoints in Per Kirkeby’s work. Kirkeby plays a dual role: He is an artist and a scientist, and both a natural historical and a cultural historical reality are explored in his works. Like nature, culture is present as an underlying structure and a motivic condition, and Kirkeby’s Magdalene comprises both the weight of the body and the light of the spirit in the same way that the topography of the cave never fully manifests itself on the canvas but is suggested as fields of colour somewhere between figuration and abstraction. Kirkeby’s artistic career started in the 1960s, when he made the acquaintance of the legendary artistic “Brothers” of Ex-skolen, but it was from the mid-70s that he truly emerged as a painter. He was discovered by Michael Werner and represented at his gallery alongside Europe’s great painters Georg Baselitz and Sigmar Polke. Today, he is considered one of Denmark’s most internationally renowned artists. “Magdalene in der Höhle” derives from John Honov’s extensive collection of Per Kirkeby’s works and the period with Daner Galleriet, which, during its brief existence from 1972–77, exhibited works by leading artists such as Per Kirkeby, Bjørn Nørgaard, Joseph Beuys, Christian Boltanski, A. R. Penck and Jörg Immendorff.