After the Second World War, society faced profound challenges: rebuilding what had been destroyed while simultaneously imagining a new future. In this period, both a desire for reckoning and a strong belief in progress emerged. New technologies, new ideas, and new ways of living also left a clear mark on the arts.
From the 1950s onwards, artists increasingly began to work with unconventional materials, new techniques, and experimental modes of practice. Questions of what art could be—and what role it should play in society—became ever more central.
Nordic artists were closely connected to international currents, and the idea of the solitary artistic genius was challenged. Instead, communities and networks emerged across national borders, where similar ideas and forms of expression developed in parallel in different parts of the world.
Featuring around 150 works from The Tangen Collection, the exhibition shows how artists of this period explored new forms of expression, processes, and perspectives. Anything could become art: mass-produced materials, objects, images, and references drawn from art history. Rebellion and Optimism reflects a time when art both engaged directly with its present moment—and dared to imagine something entirely new.
About Stories from The Tangen Collection
Between Dreams and Reality. Stories from The Tangen Collection is part of a larger collaborative project between Kunstsilo and art historian and external curator Steinar Gjessing. Since the 1990s, Gjessing has played a central role as advisor in the development of The Tangen Collection, which today comprises nearly 7,000 works of art. This will also be the first time Kunstsilo presents recent acquisitions from the art collection of business leader Stein Erik Hagen, the Canica Art Collection, for which Gjessing previously served as artistic advisor. These acquisitions—consisting of Nordic modernist art from the period 1910–1970—are now being brought together at Kunstsilo as part of The Tangen Collection. This important expansion adds significant works by key Nordic artists, contributing new dimensions and perspectives to the collection. The broad representation of artistic practices from this period strengthens the collection’s unique position as an unparalleled source of insight into modern Nordic art history.
The three exhibitions included in the collaborative project between Kunstsilo and Gjessing form parts of a larger whole. Together, they present different developmental trajectories within Nordic art throughout the twentieth century, offering a truly grand unveiling of a remarkable contribution to the history of the long-overlooked Nordic modernism.