Holmsbu Art Gallery - Henrik Sørensen collection

You are almost there before a massive wall of red granite rises towards you, as if it is growing out of the pile of stones. Holmsbu Art Museum's collection consists mainly of works by the three Holmsbu painters Henrik Sørensen, Thorvald Erichsen and Oluf Wold-Torne.

Over 50 summers, from 1911 to 1961, over 40 of Norway's foremost artists set up easels and canvases in this area. Oluf Wold-Torne was the first to discover Holmsbu, and invited his friends Thorvald Erichsen and Henrik Sørensen to visit. Soon they gathered around them both visual artists and other cultural figures who spent their summers here. In changing weather and light and with different forms of expression, they found motifs in the closed forest - and down by the Drammensfjord on the other side of Rødtangveien. The old oak by the parking lot has been depicted countless times by both Sørensen and the other artists. When a Norwegian-American who returned home wanted to cut it down to get a better view, there was an uproar in the local community. The oak was eventually protected, and is now over 300 years old.

The collection in the gallery shows Henrik Sørensen's art, and how he developed motifs and expression throughout his long artistic life. In addition, the two other founders of the artist colony are represented: Oluf Wold-Torne and Thorvald Erichsen. There are many motifs from the Holmsbunaturen, but also portraits, social-realist motifs with a pacifist undertone, and religious motifs.

When Henrik Sørensen died in 1962, his son Sven Oluf had the idea of ​​building a gallery for his father's art. The local community pitched in: Over ten years, skilled craftsmen and ordinary volunteers with solid muscles laid stone upon stone until the award-winning gallery building designed by architect Bjart Mohr opened in 1973. Hurum granite was extracted from cairns that were here before construction began, and the building was positioned so that it would not require intervention in nature. The building was awarded the Houens Fonds Diploma in 1979 and is protected by the Norwegian Ministry of Cultural Heritage.

Sven Oluf Sørensen himself often quoted Auguste Renoir: "A painting must be seen under the sky that vaulted over the artist." The picture gallery he built in Holmsbu is located in the middle of the motif itself.

Regular tours, lectures, forest walks, courses, workshops, concerts and author talks are held during the season.

Henrik Sørensen and the "Holmsbu painters" have also decorated the colorful church in Holmsbu, also referred to as the artist's church. It is well worth a visit when you are planning a trip to Holmsbu.