Albert Mertz

Albert Mertz (1920–1990) was a versatile and dedicated artist who engaged in numerous genres of art, ranging from figurative painting to conceptual art. However, his works generally have one thing in common: they reflect the artist’s anarchic and humorous attitude to art and the art institution.

Anti-authoritarian art

He studied at The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen from 1936–38, where his work showed a naturalist type of styling. His encounter with anti-authoritarian Dadaism in the late 1930s turned out to be decisive in terms of his attitude to and work with a number of artistic media. This resulted, for example, in the first Danish experimental film “Flugten” (“the flight”) from 1942, the first of many such films. This work provided inspiration for collages, photograms and experiments with sound, motion, writing, etc.

In the late 1940s, he became one of the leading artists of “Linien II”, which from 1948 worked with a simplified, constructive style. Here, he returned to painting, now in the form of simplified motifs, often derived from everyday life. Along with his strong colours, his motifs primarily served a structural purpose. Typically, he would bring his motifs into the picture as symbol-like elements. He felt that painting faced such strong competition from other means of visual expression such as film and photography that it should be simple, serving almost as a signal.

A special place in Danish art history

The common denominator of Mertz’s works is settling scores with traditional art concepts. At the same time, his unconventional and versatile working methods earn him a very special place in Danish art history. He was also a productive writer and worked as a professor at The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen from 1979–1990. He received Eckersbergs Medalje (the “Eckersberg medal”) in 1964 and Thorvaldsens Medalje (the “Thorvaldsen medal”) in 1988.

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