SCANDINAVIA

Shalom!

I have just returned from a week’s trip to Denmark, Sweden and Finland. This was my first visit to meet the Naives of Scandinavia and proved to be extremely interesting and fruitful. All 3 countries have a rich tradition of naïve art and I was delighted to encounter 2 Danish artists, 3 Swedish artists and 4 Finnish artists, each with a unique personal style and refreshing reflection of daily life in the pastoral villages of Scandinavia. I returned home with 40 new artworks, which will be displayed initially in GINA Gallery Tel Aviv and eventually at GINA Gallery New York. My hope is to return to Scandinavia in November of this year to deepen the relationship with those artists I visited during the first trip and to meet additional artists in each of the countries thus expanding GINA Gallery’s coverage of naïve art in this lovely region of the world.

Travel Log:

- The scope of the Scandinavians’ style further underscored the naives genre’s rich diversity of styles – naivism cannot be pigeonholed.

- Everyday life is the focus of their work with an orientation towards city or village scenes as opposed to landscapes.

- Many of the naives here are very popular and have a regular following. One artist in particular was embarking upon a solo show of about 20 works in a local café. 17 of these sold within 48 hours of the exhibit opening.