Karl Edvard Diriks|1855-1930
Karl Edvard Diriks, born on January 9, 1855 in Kristiania (now Oslo), was a Norwegian artist. He was the grandson of the lawyer Christian Adolph Diriks, the son of the civil servant Christian Ludvig Diriks and married to the Swedish-Norwegian artist Anna Diriks. He was an older cousin of Edvard Munch. Unlike Edvard Munch who was a true expressionist, he was more inspired by the french impressionists like Renoir and Monet. Later on he developed his own Avantgarde style that made him som popular in Paris.
He lived in France for many years and from 1885 inspired by the impressionists, especially Monet and was in close contact with French artistic life, but despite this he was typically Norwegian in his art, although the French sculptor Antoine Bourdelle stated in 1920 that Diriks' art showed so much Frenchness and gave him the name The Norwegian Frenchman. Dirik's work attracted international attention, especially in France and at . Few Norwegian artists have had the same kind of success in Paris as Edvard Diriks.
He flourished in the years between 1899 and 1922, here called “the late French period”, well integrated into the international avant-garde milieu at Montparnasse. Unlike his rather cool reception by Norwegian critics and art historians, he has been celebrated as an original landscapist by French critics. Diriks got nicknames such as “the Scandinavian giant” and “painter of winds” and was perceived as a modern Viking – rough, energetic, primitive and original. This is also terms that were used to describe his paintings.
Diriks was more interested in light, air and movement in his motifs, and less in the rendering of details. In 1907 he received the Légion d'honneur (Legion of Honour), an event marked by a banquet in Diriks' honor, hosted by a group of friends that included Auguste Rodin, Antoine Bourdelle, Paul Fort, Gustave Kahn, Emile Verhaeren, the Leblond cousins and Stuart Merril. He is represented at, among others, the National Museum in Oslo, the Musee d'Orsay in Paris, Musées des Beaux-Arts de Dunkerques, Musée Léon Dierx.
