Gustav Vigeland

Gustav Vigeland , 1869-1943, Norwegian sculptor. Vigeland's sculpture owed much to Rodin in stylistic realism but was imbued with an unrestrained romanticism and emotionalism that far surpassed Rodin's. His great undertaking in Frogner Park, Oslo, occupied Vigeland for 40 years. He planned the park and designed numerous granite and bronze sculptural groups, illustrating the development of humanity.

Vigeland, Gustav (b Mandal, 11 Apr. 1869; d Oslo, 12 Mar. 1943). The most famous of Norwegian sculptors. He studied in Oslo and Copenhagen and then (1892–5) in Paris and Italy, spending a few months with Rodin. At this time he worked in a painstakingly naturalistic style, but in 1900 he began studying medieval sculpture in preparation for restoration work on Trondheim Cathedral and this led to his work becoming expressively stylized. In the same year he made his first sketches for the massive project that occupied much of his energies for the rest of his life (it was completed the year after his death)—a series of allegorical groups at Frogner Park, Oslo. Originally only a fountain was planned, but with the help of assistants he went on to create numerous other groups, including a 17-m (55-ft) high column composed of intertwining bodies. The symbolism of the scheme is not clear, but essentially it represents ‘a statement of the doubt, disillusion, and physical decline that beset humanity in its passage through this world’ (George Heard Hamilton, Painting and Sculpture in Europe: 1880–1940, 1967). Reactions to the whole megalomaniac conception, involving scores of bronze and granite figures, have been mixed, some critics finding it stupendous, others tasteless and monotonous.

Vigeland, Gustav (1869–1943). The most famous of Norwegian sculptors. He studied in Oslo and Copenhagen and then (1892–5) in Paris and Italy, spending a few months with Rodin. At this time he worked in a painstakingly naturalistic style, but in 1900 he began studying medieval sculpture in preparation for restoration work on Trondheim Cathedral and this led to his work becoming expressively stylized. In the same year he made his first sketches for the massive project that occupied much of his energies for the rest of his life (it was completed the year after his death)—a series of allegorical groups at Frogner Park, Oslo. Originally only a fountain was planned, but with the help of assistants he went on to create numerous other groups, including a column 17 m (55 ft) high composed of intertwining bodies. The symbolism of the scheme is not clear, but essentially it represents ‘a statement of the doubt, disillusion, and physical decline that beset humanity in its passage through this world’ ( George Heard Hamilton, Painting and Sculpture in Europe: 1880–1940, 1967). Reactions to the whole megalomaniac conception, involving scores of bronze and granite figures, have been mixed, some critics finding it stupendous, others tasteless and monotonous.