Painter, geologist, writer, poet, sculptor, professor, performance artist, filmmaker, scenic designer -- Per Kirkeby (born 1938 in Copenhagen, Denmark) might be called a "Renaissance man." He has published more than 60 books of poetry, essays and novels, and has exhibited his paintings and sculptures throughout the world.

Although always interested in art, he enrolled at the University of Copenhagen to study geology as a way to make a living if he could not support himself through painting. In 1958 and in 1962 he participated in expeditions to Greenland and has subsequently made extensive visits to Australia and Central America ; these experiences have influenced his paintings and sculptures throughout his career. He completed his studies in geology in 1964 with a dissertation on Arctic quaternary geology.

Kirkeby's first appearance as an artist came in 1961, in the literary magazine Grain of Wheat, with an essay on Greenland accompanied by a woodcut. In 1962, while still attending the University of Copenhagen, he began studies at the Experimental Art School in Copenhagen, an alternative school to the traditional Royal Academy of Art. This avant-garde school allowed Kirkeby the freedom to experiment in various media, including performance art ("Happenings") and to meet the most influential European artists of the time.

Although his paintings had appeared in group exhibitions in 1963 and '64, in 1965 he had his first one-man exhibition and the first exhibition of his sculptures. He explored the vocabulary of the most common of Danish building materials, brick, in his sculptures which reflect his travels to Central America and the central theme of walls, both figuratively and literally. These layers of structuring -- walls, caves and elemental landscapes also occur in his paintings.

In 1965 he also published his first book of poems, and published his first novel, 2.15, in 1967, consisting of a collage-like "collection of fragments" (Lasse B. Antonsen, Exhibition notes, 1994). Since 1982 he has been a member of the Danish Academy of Literature.

Mr. Kirkeby's paintings, sculptures and graphic works have been exhibited at the Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Copenhagen, the Biennale Venice, New York City's Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum and Michael Werner Gallery, the City Art Museum, Helsinki, the National Gallery, Prague, the Dallas Art Museum, London's Tate Gallery and the Barbican Art Gallery, and the Musee d'Art Moderne de la ville de Paris, as well as in numerous other galleries and museums throughout the world. He has also designed stamps for the Danish post and wine labels for Chateau Mouton Rothschild.

Mr. Kirkeby considers himself a painter. "I am a painter because that is how I see the world." (Interview with Eddy Devolder in Cologne, 1990) He feels that an artist reacts to and interprets the world in which he lives and that the "only true reality is that which people create in paintings. The so-called 'true reality' cannot be relied on, is a contourless materiality. A materiality we use to create a reality we can live in, like paint in a tube for painting pictures. That is why paintings are so important, magical, all paintings, for they all give us something real to live in." (1982, Selected Essays from Bravura, Van Abbemuseum)

Color is uppermost in importance; it predominates over form. It is the color of emotion, "not colors such as we find in tubes or the names we give to them, red, blue, yellow, etc....but colors that are connected to things that have happened, a sinking ship, or your wife leaving you or things like that....I register a set of colors. After that I look for a form, a motif....Then begins the long journey of painting." "when I paint I like to think of myself as a gardener. My canvas is the plot of land and my colors -- that is, the matter of the paint itself -- are the soil, the flower beds, with their different components and varying textures." (Eddy Devolder interview, 1990) His paintings are never signed; he writes his name on the back in block letters. He feels that "signing is so pretentious. Nature signs nothing. You know, I dream that my paintings will end up by returning to something absolutely normal." (Eddy Devolder interview, 1990)

In 1996 the Royal Danish Ballet commissioned a new full-length Swan Lake from Peter Martins. Mr. Martins commissioned the scenery and decor for this new production from Mr. Kirkeby, his first stage design for a ballet. Mr. Kirkeby also collaborated on the costumes with Kirsten Lund Nielsen. On April 29, 1999 this collaborative Swan Lake premieres at New York City Ballet.

Per Kirkeby currently lives and works in Copenhagen, Laeso and Karlsruhe.