Knud Odde: A Bridge-Builder Between Punk’s Fantasy and Reality

At the Online Auction on Tuesday 15 April, we are offering a collection of Knud Odde paintings, featuring some of the artist’s most emblematic figures from his breakthrough period in the early 1990s. Among them are Siggimund Blue, Erich von Stroheim, and Sergei Eisenstein—recurring characters and focal points in Odde’s visual universe. 

The teenage boy Siggimund, with large ears and dark, piercing eyes, is Odde’s own creation. A figure that serves as a layered visualization of both the tangible and intangible: the pitch-black melancholy and romance of the 1980s, David Bowie’s mythological persona Ziggy Stardust, and perhaps a reflection of Odde’s younger self. 

The Connection to Music

The figures in Odde’s works are often portraits of prominent personalities from the avant-garde art scene, depicted in an almost graphic style with sharp, trembling contour lines. The result is powerful and contrasting: an expression that conveys great inner depth through an outwardly light, almost pop-art-like surface. As in punk music, the raw and imperfect are essential elements that heighten the tension and presence of the final artwork. 

Although independent of each other, it can be difficult to separate Odde’s visual art from his music. The expressions of his figures often seem to be in a dialogue—both within his iconic cast of characters and with his close circle of bandmates. Facial fragments are shared and blended. A piece may clearly be a portrait of Lou Reed, but could it also be Sort Sol guitarist Lars Top-Galia? It’s the legendary filmmaker Erich von Stroheim, but is it not also singer Steen Jørgensen?