1950, Per Krogh, The city and the country (Byen og dens oppland) (detail) -- Oslo City Hall
From the Oslo Municipality Art Collection website (www.kunstsamlingen.no):
The fresco covers almost all the surfaces of the room and, during the changing seasons, reproduces the activities of city life on the southern long wall and those of the districts on the northern. We also get a glimpse of some of the houses, and these function as a kind of images in the picture, while at the same time giving associations to the collective novels of the interwar period. Here Krohg could take as a starting point motifs that he had used in his easel paintings, and like his "fresco brothers" Revold and Rolfsen, he often used family and friends as models for the figures in the picture.
On the west short wall, the city and the country are linked together in a symbolic representation of the life of bees, as they fly between the cube (the city) and the rose bush (the district) where they gather nourishment. At the top of the north long wall, memories of the occupation period are made present in the representation of a prison camp and in the representation of people fighting giant insects. On the ceiling, snow and fog, light and shadow, rain and thunder are symbolized, while the play of light in the paintings on the wall surfaces is "explained" through the suggestion that a huge bird partially shades the sun with its wings.
The motif of the tree root and stump grinder on the north short wall was seen by Krohg while he was a prisoner at Grini during the war. At the same time, it gives associations to a cathedral's rose window, which is a good fit, because the gallery is high, narrow and dark like a church room. Krohg emphasized this further by contrasting the large figures at the bottom of the picture fields with tall houses and trees, and the "Gothic" character is reinforced by the ornaments in the window niche on the other short wall.
1950, Per Krogh, The city and the country (Byen og dens oppland) (detail) -- Oslo City Hall
From the Oslo Municipality Art Collection website (www.kunstsamlingen.no):
The fresco covers almost all the surfaces of the room and, during the changing seasons, reproduces the activities of city life on the southern long wall and those of the districts on the northern. We also get a glimpse of some of the houses, and these function as a kind of images in the picture, while at the same time giving associations to the collective novels of the interwar period. Here Krohg could take as a starting point motifs that he had used in his easel paintings, and like his "fresco brothers" Revold and Rolfsen, he often used family and friends as models for the figures in the picture.
On the west short wall, the city and the country are linked together in a symbolic representation of the life of bees, as they fly between the cube (the city) and the rose bush (the district) where they gather nourishment. At the top of the north long wall, memories of the occupation period are made present in the representation of a prison camp and in the representation of people fighting giant insects. On the ceiling, snow and fog, light and shadow, rain and thunder are symbolized, while the play of light in the paintings on the wall surfaces is "explained" through the suggestion that a huge bird partially shades the sun with its wings.
The motif of the tree root and stump grinder on the north short wall was seen by Krohg while he was a prisoner at Grini during the war. At the same time, it gives associations to a cathedral's rose window, which is a good fit, because the gallery is high, narrow and dark like a church room. Krohg emphasized this further by contrasting the large figures at the bottom of the picture fields with tall houses and trees, and the "Gothic" character is reinforced by the ornaments in the window niche on the other short wall.