Grenaa
Grenaa (or Grenå) is a Danish town and seaport on the east coast of the Jutlandic peninsula. Tourism, education and commerce are important sectors in the economy of Grenaa. It is the only larger town on Djursland. Grenaa is the municipal seat, an ...
– 18 December 2014, in
Gentofte
Gentofte () is a district of Gentofte Municipality in the northern suburbs of Copenhagen, Denmark. Major landmarks include Gentofte Town Hall, Gentofte Hospital and Gentofte Church. Gentofte Lake with surrounding parkland and nature reserves form ...
) was a Danish artist and resistance leader. His career as a public figure started in 1942, when he and seven other young Danes founded the resistance group, ''Churchill Klubben'' (The
Churchill Club
The Churchill Club ( da, Churchill-klubben) was a group of eight teenage schoolboys from Aalborg Cathedral School in the north of Jutland who performed acts of sabotage against the Germans during the occupation of Denmark in the Second World War.
...
). After the war, he worked briefly as a newspaper reporter, attended law school, and worked for a film company before devoting his life to art.
Knud Pedersen was a resistance fighter during World War II. Angered that the Danish government had let the Nazis invade without the Danish army putting up a fight, he and a group of Danish teenage boys started the Churchill Club, named after British leader
Winston Churchill
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (30 November 187424 January 1965) was a British statesman, soldier, and writer who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom twice, from 1940 to 1945 Winston Churchill in the Second World War, dur ...
. The Churchill Club sabotaged cars and train stations and stole many weapons and explosives from the Nazis. Pedersen was arrested and tried for sabotage, stealing, destruction of property, and other offences. He was imprisoned for two years, spending one year in a city prison, King Hans Gades Jail, and the next in Nyborg State Prison. After release, the Resistance refused his service as the Nazis were watching him, and he could easily be identified on covert missions. Eventually, he joined K Company, Division B, Group 4, which moved weapons caches to avoid German detection.
Post-war activities
After release, Pedersen turned to the arts, partly as an artist but mainly as an organizer. As a youth, he loved painting, and his father encouraged him with an account at a local art store for supplies. His ambition was to make art available to everyone, and he launched several projects. In 1943, authorities gave him permission to install ''Byens billede'', the Picture of the City, an empty frame in which paintings were exhibited. In 1945, he founded his ''Kunstbibliotek'', or Art Library, an art rental space where people could rent a painting for the price of a packet of cigarettes. Both projects still exist, and the Picture of the City is on Nikolaj Kirke Plads in
Copenhagen
Copenhagen ( or .; da, København ) is the capital and most populous city of Denmark, with a proper population of around 815.000 in the last quarter of 2022; and some 1.370,000 in the urban area; and the wider Copenhagen metropolitan ar ...
.
As a young bohemian in Copenhagen in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Pedersen was acquainted with many local artists. One was
Arthur Köpcke
Arthur Köpcke (Born 1928 in Hamburg - Died 1977 in Copenhagen) (aka Arthur Køpcke), was a German-born artist known for his contributions to the first generation of Fluxus. Köpcke’s work includes paintings, scrolls, literary works, objects, co ...
or Køpcke, a German national emigrated to Denmark in 1958. Køpcke ran a small eponymous gallery, Galerie Køpcke, that exhibited some of the most advanced art in Europe. Besides local artists, he exhibited works by
Piero Manzoni
Piero Manzoni di Chiosca e Poggiolo, better known as Piero Manzoni (July 13, 1933 – February 6, 1963) was an Italian artist best known for his ironic approach to avant-garde art. Often compared to the work of Yves Klein, his own work anticip ...
Robert Filliou
Robert Filliou (17 January 1926 – 2 December 1987) was a French artist associated with Fluxus, who produced works as a filmmaker, "action poet," sculptor, and happenings maestro.
Life
In 1943, Filliou became a member of the French Communi ...
,
Niki de Saint Phalle
Niki de Saint Phalle (; born Catherine Marie-Agnès Fal de Saint Phalle; 29 October 193021 May 2002) was a French-American sculptor, painter, filmmaker, and author of colorful hand-illustrated books. Widely noted as one of the few female monume ...
, and
Daniel Spoerri
Daniel Spoerri (born 27 March 1930) is a Swiss artist and writer born in Romania. Spoerri is best known for his "snare-pictures," a type of assemblage or object art, in which he captures a group of objects, such as the remains of meals eaten by in ...
. Through Rot, Filliou, and Spoerri, he also met
George Maciunas
George Maciunas (; lt, Jurgis Mačiūnas; November 8, 1931 – May 9, 1978) was a Lithuanian American artist, born in Kaunas. A founding member and the central coordinator of Fluxus, an international community of artists, architects, composers ...
, who coined the name
Fluxus
Fluxus was an international, interdisciplinary community of artists, composers, designers and poets during the 1960s and 1970s who engaged in experimental art performances which emphasized the artistic process over the finished product. Fluxus ...
. Køpcke offered to organize a Fluxus concert in Copenhagen, and Maciunas agreed.
By that time, Køpcke had to leave his gallery space, and Pederson gave him space at Nikolaj Kirke, today
Kunsthallen Nikolaj
The Nikolaj Contemporary Art Center ( da, Nikolaj Kunsthal, formerly (from 2006 - 2010) ''Kunsthallen Nikolaj'' and (until 2006) ''Nikolaj Udstillingsbygning'') is an arts centre in Copenhagen which occupies the former St. Nicholas Church ( da, ...
, the old desanctified church in Copenhagen’s center that housed the Art Library. Pedersen took an interest and helped organize, resulting in Dennark’s first series of Fluxus concerts, the second in Fluxus’s history, at Nikolaj Kirke from 23 until 28 November 1962. Pedersen enjoyed the experience and continued to organize Fluxus concerts at the Art Library. The November 1962 concerts brought together a group of four,Pedersen, Køpcke, and two young Danish composers,
Eric Andersen
Eric Andersen (born February 14, 1943) is an American folk music singer-songwriter, who has written songs recorded by Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan, Judy Collins, Linda Ronstadt, the Grateful Dead and many others. Early in his career, in the 1960s, he ...
and Henning Christiansen, who enlivened Danish art life with numerous Fluxus performances in 1963 and 1964, many organized by Pedersen.
Pedersen continued to work on other projects besides Fluxus. In 1964, he got
Tuborg
Tuborg is a Danish brewing company founded in 1873 on a harbour in Hellerup, an area North of Copenhagen, Denmark. Since 1970 it has been part of the Carlsberg Group. The brewery's flagship, the Tuborg pilsner, was brewed for the first time in ...
brewery to agree to display art works on the sides of beer delivery vans throughout the country. At the Art Library, he installed a jukebox with works of sound art and offered to rent jukeboxes to every interested institution. In 1968, he opened a savings account at a special interest rate at the Danish
Bikuben bank Sparekassen Bikuben was a Denmark, Danish savings bank founded on 3 March 1857 in Copenhagen, Denmark. It merged with GiroBank under the name BG Bank in 1995 and has later been absorbed by Danske Bank. Its former headquarters at Silkegade 6-8 was li ...
, depositing 100 Danish crowns. He calculated that the 100 crowns would grow to 659 billion crowns in 285 years, providing enough to finance three projects by Fluxus artists Eric Andersen, George Brecht, and Arthur Køpcke.
Throughout this time, Pedersen developed as an artist, partly because Fluxus art is about creating a framework within which the art can develop. Some examples follow. In 1967, he opened the Copenhagen Museum of Modern Art, a virtual museum, where he was director and received daily invitations and publications from other museums. During the early 1970s, the "Fluxshoe" exhibition toured England, and Pedersen organized a "two-ball football match" at University College Sports Ground for
the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford
Modern Art Oxford is an art gallery established in 1965 in Oxford, England. From 1965 to 2002, it was called The Museum of Modern Art, Oxford.
The gallery presents exhibitions of modern and contemporary art. It has a national and internationa ...
. In 1992, during the “Excellent 1992” festival, he organized (i) the Good Buy Supermarket, a one-day sale of art multiples at a regular supermarket, and (ii) the “Three Star à la Carte,” where Fluxus pieces were served in a restaurant setting. The latter was reinterpreted at the Baltic Centre in
Gateshead
Gateshead () is a large town in northern England. It is on the River Tyne's southern bank, opposite Newcastle upon Tyne, Newcastle to which it is joined by seven bridges. The town contains the Gateshead Millennium Bridge, Millennium Bridge, Sage ...
on 15 February 2009 in connection with the ''George Maciunas: The Dream of Fluxus'' exhibition.
Pedersen ran the Art Library for most of his life, but he was a prolific writer and initiated many projects. He founded the
European Film College
European Film College (Danish: Den Europæiske Filmhøjskole) is a film school and a Danish folk high school in Denmark, offering 1-year film foundation programme in practical filmmaking covering the fields of screenwriting, camera, sound, acting ...
,
Ebeltoft
Ebeltoft is an old port town on the central east coast of Denmark with a population of 7,204 (1 January 2022).
Kunsthallen Nikolaj
The Nikolaj Contemporary Art Center ( da, Nikolaj Kunsthal, formerly (from 2006 - 2010) ''Kunsthallen Nikolaj'' and (until 2006) ''Nikolaj Udstillingsbygning'') is an arts centre in Copenhagen which occupies the former St. Nicholas Church ( da, ...