Mogens Lorentzen. “Opstandelse”, 1919

In the years around World War I, European modernists – and in Denmark the circle around the groundbreaking avant-garde journal Klingen (Including Lorenzen) – were deeply fascinated by African tribal masks. Artists such as Pablo Picasso and Amedeo Modigliani had shown how one could peel away the superficial and naturalistic aspects of a face to reach raw, universal emotions. By painting the faces as stylized, dark wooden masks with almond-shaped, empty eyes, Lorentzen directly connected to this international movement in 1919.