“Hvilende model” is exhibited at Holstebro Art Museum.

Astrid Noack is one of the twentieth century's most significant Danish artists, and as a sculptor deeply inspired by the French tradition. She comes from a merchant family from Ribe, but moves to Copenhagen at the age of 14 to live with her older sister. In 1906 she begins her training as a sculptor and later works under, among others, Joakim Skovgaard.

Like many of her contemporaries, she travels to Paris in 1920. She becomes pregnant, but manages to support herself as a craftswoman by restoring churches and sculptures in France. She is particularly interested in Gothic and older expressions, which is expressed in her art, which is slightly stylized, naturalistic in contrast to everything that happens in classical modernism.

Astrid Noack experiences the great sorrow that her little son Stefan dies of measles. She loses her footing and lives as a homeless person under the bridges in Paris. At the same time, the years in France were very formative, griefful but also rewarding in terms of the interaction with other artists and the connection to l’Academie Scandinave. Here, Adam Fischer and Gottfred Eickhoff were particularly important in relation to her artistic formation. After the stock market crash of 1929, Noack returns to Denmark.

In 1935, Astrid Noack is the first woman to be admitted to the artists’ association Grønningen, and in 2006 she iss admitted to the Danish Cultural Canon – as the only woman. During her lifetime, she receives both the Eckersberg and Thorvaldsen medals, as well as several grants.

Astrid Noack is shown in the exhibition “Humanity First” at Holstebro Kunstmuseum in 2024–25. Her former studio in Nørrebro is now used as an artistic experimental, critical and educational space.