Else Alfelt was a painter who was born and died in Copenhagen

Copenhagen

Copenhagen is the capital and largest city of Denmark, with an urban population of 1,199,224 and a metropolitan population of 1,930,260 . With the completion of the transnational Øresund Bridge in 2000, Copenhagen has become the centre of the increasingly integrating Øresund Region...

. She was one of the two women in the CoBrA

COBRA (avant-garde movement)

COBRA was a European avant-garde movement active from 1948 to 1951. The name was coined in 1948 by Christian Dotremont from the initials of the members' home cities: Copenhagen , Brussels , Amsterdam .-History:...

. She was married to Carl-Henning Pedersen

Carl-Henning Pedersen

Carl-Henning Pedersen was a Danish painter and a key member of the COBRA movement. He was known as the "Scandinavian Chagall", and was one of the leading Danish artists of the second half of the 20th century....

, also a veteran of CoBrA.

Alfelt begun her painting career early but never had any formal education in art. She sent art pieces to the yearly show of Danish artists (Kunstnernes Efterårsudstilling) beginning in 1929, but was not accepted there until 1936 displaying two naturalistic

Naturalism (art)

Naturalism in art refers to the depiction of realistic objects in a natural setting. The Realism movement of the 19th century advocated naturalism in reaction to the stylized and idealized depictions of subjects in Romanticism, but many painters have adopted a similar approach over the centuries...

 portraits. Soon after this, her painting style switched over to abstract. In the late 1940s she joined CoBrA.

Alfelt's art often uses the shape of spiral

Spiral

In mathematics, a spiral is a curve which emanates from a central point, getting progressively farther away as it revolves around the point.-Spiral or helix:...

s, mountain

Mountain

Image:Himalaya_annotated.jpg|thumb|right|The Himalayan mountain range with Mount Everestrect 58 14 160 49 Chomo Lonzorect 200 28 335 52 Makalurect 378 24 566 45 Mount Everestrect 188 581 920 656 Tibetan Plateaurect 250 406 340 427 Rong River...

s and sphere

Sphere

A sphere is a perfectly round geometrical object in three-dimensional space, such as the shape of a round ball. Like a circle in two dimensions, a perfect sphere is completely symmetrical around its center, with all points on the surface lying the same distance r from the center point...

s as an expression of "inner space". Apart from paintings she produced several mosaic

Mosaic

Mosaic is the art of creating images with an assemblage of small pieces of colored glass, stone, or other materials. It may be a technique of decorative art, an aspect of interior decoration, or of cultural and spiritual significance as in a cathedral...

 pieces. When she made portraits, her husband would often pose for them.

She was awarded the Tagea Brandt Rejselegat

Tagea Brandt Rejselegat

The Tagea Brandt Rejselegat is awarded annually, on the 17 March.The scholarship was created and endowed by Danish industrialist Vilhelm Brandt in honor of his wife, Tagea...

 in 1961.

External links

• Works at Carl-Henning Pederson Museum Text in Danish
  Danish language
  Danish is a North Germanic language spoken by around six million people, principally in the country of Denmark. It is also spoken by 50,000 Germans of Danish ethnicity in the northern parts of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, where it holds the status of minority language...