Introduction

Olivia Holm-Møller: Self Pwith Palette and Horse, 1945-1949. Tempera on canvas, 61 x 45 cm. Holstebro Kunstmuseum.

The Danish artist Olivia Holm-Møller (1875–1970) practised as a sculptor, graphic artist and painter and is known especially for her expressive and colourful visual expression with cosmic and symbolic imagery. In retrospect, her practice may be viewed as forming a link between early Danish modernism of the 1910s and 1920s and the later expressive painting of the 1940s and 1950s. As a painter, she made her own path and developed her own version of abstract painting at an early historical time in a Danish context.

The Olivia Holm-Møller letter archive is located at Holstebro Kunstmuseum [Holstebro Art Museum], which is also home to a rich collection of the artist’s works. The letter archive covers a period of about 70 years, which makes the correspondence an essential source of insight into Holm-Møller’s work from the beginning of her career until her final years. With few exceptions, the archive consists of Holm-Møller’s letters to others, which means that we can gain insight into her artistic practice and thinking through the artist’s own words.

Go to search

The earliest letters in the archive date from 1900, the year that Holm-Møller left her hometown of Homå in Djursland for Copenhagen to attend Emilie Mundt and Marie Luplau’s school of drawing. Prior to this, she had taught at several private primary and lower secondary schools and folk high schools, all based on the ideas of N. F. S. Grundtvig. Through her work, she formed a close friendship with the painter Elise Konstantin-Hansen and her two sisters, Thora and Signe Constantin-Hansen, whom she shared a home with during her initial years in Copenhagen. Holm-Møller’s letters to the three sisters are a particularly rich source of insight into the early years of her life as an artist, including her acceptance into the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, in autumn 1901, and her time as an employee at the iron foundry C. M. Hess Jernstøberi in Vejle from circa 1902 to 1905.

Holm-Møller had her debut as an exhibiting artist in 1908 at the Charlottenborg Autumn Exhibition and had her breakthrough as a painter in 1914 with her painting Niobe. Although her application to join the artist’s association Den Frie Udstilling [The Free Exhibition] was rejected, she actively exhibited until her death, and the letter archive is testimony to her many solo and group exhibitions. Holm-Møller’s letters to her friend the visual artist Carla Colsmann also gives us insight into the exhibition opportunities open to women artists during the early 1900s.

About half of the material in the archive is Holm-Møller’s letters to her biographer and longtime friend, Niels Th. Mortensen. Some of these letters relate to Niels Th. Mortensen’s work on a biography of Holm-Møller, which came out in different editions in 1940, 1942 and, as an expanded monograph, in 1960. The letters provide insight into the process of writing the biography as well as Holm-Møller’s own thoughts on the relationship between biography and the artist’s body of work. For example, in one letter she writes that she feels that Niels Th. Mortensen should focus on her art and begin the book when her life as an artist begins, in 1900 (letter dated 23 February 1959). However, the just over 200 letters to Niels Th. Mortensen address many other topics besides the biography, including, at times, Holm-Møller’s comments on specific works of art. In some cases, the mention of specific pieces touches on her artistic ambitions, while others are of a more practical nature, as when Holm-Møller expresses her dissatisfaction with the hanging of her suite Slægten I-IX Kin I–IX at Askov Folk High School. Her letters to Niels Th. Mortensen also provide insight into the ageing artist’s desire to institutionalize her works in a museum as she approaches the end of her life.

In addition to the mention of individual works of art, the letters provide insight into Holm-Møller’s artistic position. Holm-Møller never joined an artist’s association and unlike many of her contemporaries, she did not apply an ideological artistic manifesto or a stated ism to her art. Instead, the letters paint a picture of an understanding of art that acknowledges a wide range of expressions and believes that each artist has to work from their own mind. As she puts it in a letter to Niels Th. Mortensen, ‘one artist’s mission and way of expressing it [may therefore] be very different from other artists’. An artist’s creative freedom is unlimited, he or she can only follow their own mind’ (letter dated 1 August 1938).

In this introduction to the archive, I have merely outlined a few possible angles on the material, which can be approached and read from a variety of perspectives. The letters contain factual information about Holm-Møller’s biography but also provide a basis for possible interpretations in relation to her artistic intentions and considerations.

Today, there is no complete overview of Holm-Møller’s artistic production. This project gives a wider audience access to exploring Holm-Møller’s artistic practice and body of work, and hopefully, the letters can lead to new perspectives on the life and work of this remarkable artist.

Silke Engberg, 2025