He dedicated his life to one line – Dagsavisen
Everyone loved Jan Groth. He was a generous and common man who saw his fellow men. Were you lucky enough to get in touch with him, you had his full attention. Exactly that could be a challenge, because at the exhibition openings in his home country in recent years, he was so overwhelmed that people had to stand like herring in a barrel, especially in his permanent gallery in Oslo, Galleri Riis.
This has not always been the case. Groth’s distinctive features were recognized and celebrated with exhibitions in the art world’s most prestigious galleries and museums. Here at home, we had a hard time understanding the meaning of “just drawing a line” for a long time. Even well into the new millennium, it was a popular exercise to ask funny questions to the celebrated artist.
Jan Groth was born on November 13, 1938 in Stavanger. Already as a four-year-old, “everyone” knew he had to become an artist. He made his debut as a painter in 1958, at Charlottenborg in Copenhagen. But the breakthrough came as a textile artist after he had traveled to Amsterdam to train in the profession. There he met Ida Benedikte Herlufsdatter Hansen (1933–2015). The two were so in agreement in understanding how the black tapestries were to be made, that it can almost be called a symbiosis. He also weaved Jan, but it is Benedikte Groth we can thank for Jan leaving 101 (or 102) rugs. Today, they are traded for millions. The most important thing is the stage curtain he made for the Norwegian Theater, for the opening of the new building in Oslo in 1985. It is pure magic when the light is lowered and the white line shines in the theater’s darkness.
[ Henie Onstads aids-utstilling: En påminnelse om at frykt er en fundamental følelse (+) ]
It was also the tapestries that gave him the big breakthrough. In 1971 he took over the Museum of Industrial Art in Copenhagen, and it came the gallery owner Betty Parsons (1900–1982). She was a legend in New York’s art scene, and had played a crucial role in the breakthrough of abstract expressionism in the 1940s and 50s. She was a gallery owner for the modernist pioneers Barnett Newman, Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko. They were followed by Jasper Johns, Agnes Martin and Robert Rauschenberg. The early 1970s gave way to a new generation of artists. Jan Groth made her debut with her in 1972. The exhibition with 16 drawings and seven rugs was a great success, and it was sent on tour in the USA. The foundation of fame was laid.
Jan Groth settled in “the big apple”, where he became a gentlemanly host for countless visiting Norwegians. There are many stories of heartfelt meetings and a stream of speech that lasted well into the night. In 1982, he became a professor at the New York School of Visual Arts, where he taught for twelve years. It is worth noting that the teaching did not result in more «Grother». As a teacher, he was primarily a listener. In 1994 he moved home to Norway and Oslo. Over the years abroad, the farm in Dagali had been his stronghold, and now it became a sanctuary where he could cultivate the “lyrical, incurable loneliness” – as he put it in NRK TV’s “Icon” portrait in 2015. In Dagali, they believe, by the way, that he «drew the straws on the embankment».
[ Nasjonalmuseet tar internasjonal sats (+) ]
The highlight of his career came with the large solo exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum in New York in 1986. He filled the entire rotunda of the iconic, spiral-shaped building. The number of his successful exhibitions in international prestigious museums is so high that on the Norwegian art scene he is probably just beaten by Edvard Munch. The two are the only Norwegians who have had a separate exhibition at Guggenheim.
In 2017, Jan Groth was finally achieved as a Festival Exhibitor in Bergen Kunsthall, the most prestigious solo exhibition you can get in Norway. It felt like it was overtime, and that says something about how sent the recognition came to him at home. But he had a separate exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Oslo in 2001, and in 2002 he was appointed commander of St. Olavs Orden. As early as the end of the 1960s, Jan Groth joined forces with the Danish museum man Steingrim Laursen (1931–2007). Together, they donated their art collection to the Stavanger Art Museum, in two rounds.
Jan Groth was no minimalist. On the contrary, he considered himself an expressionist. He states that he does not experiment, but he «deepens, cultivates, concentrates and compresses». But what was it that made me, and am, so fascinated by these lines? I thought about it when I reviewed the Festival Exhibition in 2017. I did not have a single answer, but I wrote that «(…) I have realized that it must be a mixture of an artistic boldness and compression. Putting a line on a white sheet is an act. Once you have started, there is no going back. The first line defines a room even if it is an individual standing alone. Jan Groth brings the line to life. By varying the pace, pressure and intensity he it a course. It stays alive even if it is static. ” That’s how simple it can be said.