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Arctic explorer Knud Rasmussen (1879 - 1933)
This sculpture was submitted to a competition for a monument to arctic explorer Knud Rasmussen. Along with a more than life size portrait of the explorer (LSÓ 1156) Sigurjón Ólafsson sent this fi to Charlottenborg, where all proposals were to be judged and eventually exhibited. As it turned out, all except Ólafsson's proposal. According to a statement, dated 10.07.1958, sent to Ólafsson by attorney Verner Nielsen, the panel of judges decided to disqualify his proposal, the reason being "that it was executed in a scale of 1:12, and not 1:5, as stipulated by the rules of the competition." The reasons for the artist's choice of a smaller scale were entirely practical and economical. Since he was now living in Iceland, it would have been extremely costly for him to send a larger scale sculpture to Denmark. In 1982 a bronze cast (no. 4) of this figure was given to the township of Nuuk in Greenland by the Icelandic section of the Nordic Association (Foreningen Norden). Sculptor Sigurjón Ólafsson and his Portraits Sigurjón Ólafsson Museum 2008, ISBN 978-87-88755-05-03 |