Highlights from 1917 to 1993
The artist Hans Gjesme from Lærdal created art from the age of 13 until he was 89. He started early with drawing and watercolours. In the 1920s, his father paid for him to study. Gjesme was not part of an artistic group, but one could say he was a ‘Vestland painter’. Painting and drawing were his main media. He also worked to some extent with sculpture and printmaking.
His style evolved from detailed Naturalism in his youth, through late Impressionism influenced by his teacher Paul Gauguin in the early 1920s. He drew inspiration from his teacher André Lhote’s Cubist style whilst studying in Paris in 1925. Guidance from Axel Revold in the late 1920s led Gjesme to adopt a more simplified style with more stylised figures.
The majority of the motifs are from Lærdal and Oslo. Some are from his study trips to Paris and Røros. In a sketchbook from 1929, Gjesme wrote: ‘Art should be of the present, of this instant’. Here we present highlights from the various types of motifs the artist explored. He depicted landscapes and nature in all seasons. He rendered architecture and city life. He portrayed relatives and acquaintances, both on his own initiative and on commission. He worked on still lifes, interiors and nudes. He depicted people at work, both at home in Lærdal and at Gaustad Psychiatric Hospital, where he was admitted for 16 years. There, he also depicted how he experienced his fellow patients’ and his own illness and loneliness.
In the drawings from his time at Gaustad, Gjesme retains the same steady line and the same eye for detail as before, whilst in his paintings he works with stronger colours and colour combinations than before and in an increasingly simplified and expressive style. Over the course of his long artistic career, he explored many of the styles that characterise Modernism. After Gaustad, his style became even more dissolved – and at times marked by tremors – due to years of heavy medication.
With this exhibition, we wish to showcase some of the most representative works Gjesme created over the course of 76 years. Some of them are selected favourites from the public.
Our sincerest thanks to Sogn Savings Bank for supporting the exhibition.
The exhibition opens at 17:00 on the 19th of June 2026