FRANS & NICO WIDERBERG
20th May - 17th July 2021

Frans Widerberg - Horizon, 1984, Lithograph, 37 x 46cm

Celebrating the re-opening of the gallery after lockdown, Gallagher & Turner is pleased to announce the launch of a joint exhibition by internationally distinguished artists, Frans and Nico Widerberg.

Frans Widerberg first exhibited in Newcastle in 1986 at the Hatton Gallery during the Newcastle Festival and continued to exhibit regularly in Newcastle and London until two years before his death in 2017. His son, Nico Widerberg held his first one-man exhibition in Newcastle during the Visions Norway Festival in 1999 and was subsequently commissioned by the City Council’s Hidden Rivers Programme to produce ‘Pillar Man’ 2004, on Sandyford Road, which traces the route of the Pandon Burn twenty metres below.

His other commissions in the region include sculpture for Central Square North and South, Seaham Hall Hotel & Spa, in addition to three other substantial commissions for Northumbria University’s city centre campus.

SCULPTURE TRAIL - NORTHUMBRIA UNIVERSITY CAMPUS

Frans Widerberg, Hoverer, 2007, bronze, 40 x 25 x 22cm

Nico Widerberg, Baggage (I), 2008, Lithograph, 42 x 35cm

Nico Widerberg, Shadow, Lithograph, 13 x 11cm

Widely acknowledged as Norway’s foremost figurative painter since Edvard Munch, Frans Widerberg (1934 – 2017), represented Norway at the Venice Biennale in 1974, exhibited at the Gallery of Modern Art during the Edinburgh Festival in 1986; the Barbican Art Centre in 1992 during the Scandinavian Festival in London which included ‘The Frieze of Life’ by Edvard Munch at the National Gallery’s Sainsbury Wing. He exhibited regularly in Newcastle from 1987 to 2015. His works are held in the collections of the British Museum, London, the Gallery of Modern Art Edinburgh, and most National Collections in Norway.

Born in 1960, Nico Widerberg works across the disciplines, moving effortlessly between sculpture, painting and printmaking with the consistency of an artist who is entirely at one with himself and his materials. Despite a relentless programme of exhibitions, commissions, lectures and interviews he responds positively to the ever-increasing demand for his work and continues to produce extraordinarily poetic works in glass, bronze, granite and marble. His work is represented in major public and private collections internationally. He currently lives and works in Oslo.

Nico Widerberg, Strength, 1996, 38 x 25.5cm

Nico Widerberg, Baggage (B), 2008, Lithograph, 42 x 35cm

Nico’s international profile includes exhibitions in Athens during the Summer Olympics in 2004; Grounds for Sculpture, New Jersey USA in 2005/06; in Newcastle upon Tyne from 1999 and at Kings Place Gallery, London from 2008 – 2015. At an early stage in his career he won several major public sculpture competitions and has since received many private and public commissions. In 2012 he was privately commissioned to create a memorial sculpture for each of the 56 local authorities in Norway where the 77 victims of the 22 July 2011 Utoya massacre lived. He is currently acknowledged as one of the most distinguished artists working in Norway today

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