Svend Wiig Hansen at ARoS: Walking, Falling, Standing

You enter level 5 of ARoS, and the first thing you encounter is a large sculpture of a woman. She sits with her legs spread and her strong hands against her own chest. Her name is Mother Earth, and she was once so provocative that an Aarhus mayor had her driven away in the back of a Falck car.

It was 1954. She stood on the Town Hall Square in Aarhus and Mayor Unmack Larsen didn't like her. The next day, all Danish newspapers had the story on the front page, and Svend Wiig Hansen was suddenly an artist that everyone knew.

Now she sits here and welcomes you, as the first work in Walking, Falling, Standing by Svend Wiig Hansen. A large special exhibition at ARoS, which brings together 50 years of work by one of Denmark's most important post-war artists. You don't quite understand the outrage when you stand in front of her. She seems almost caring. Like a woman who carries the whole world in her body. It is the first of many experiences that you will encounter as you walk through the exhibition.

The sons' story about their father

The exhibition is structured in chapters instead of chronologically. Scandal and Success, Man First, Creative Urge and Light and Shadows. It actually makes sense when you walk around between the works. Because Wiig Hansen's work does not move in a straight line. It circles around you and comes back to the same questions about what it means to be human.

His two sons, Nicolaj and Christian, are with us on a tour of the exhibition for the press viewing. They add little anecdotes along the way. Their father had no assistant and he carried all the clay up to the third floor himself. He sang in the studio while he worked, because he loved to sing. He had a summer house up by Skagen, by the North Sea, and loved the cold and the wind. It is a gift to have them with him, because they make their father a person, and not just a name on a wall.

The Small Room with the Battle, 1963

Inside one of the first rooms you encounter, three paintings hang next to each other. Two of them are covered in layers upon layers of dark paint. Thick, heavy and almost sculptural. It is as if Svend Wiig Hansen has painted the same picture over and over again, until the thoughts have settled like heavy sediment on the canvas. You cannot see what lies at the bottom. It is buried in the many layers.

The third painting is different. It is Kampen from 1963. It is not painted in the same heavy layers. The canvas seems to shine through in several places, and the figures are drawn with an almost childish hand. It is reminiscent of how children draw people. Broad lines and bright colors. Here there is no doubt about what is what.
There's something about that contrast that lingers. Two paintings buried under the layers of darkness of adulthood. And one that reminds us of what the world looked like before we lost faith that it was whole.

Together, but alone

Many of the works are gloomy and that is no coincidence. Wiig Hansen painted after the Second World War, and he was part of the generation that had seen what man can do to man. He painted fear, he painted division, and he painted fighting. But it is not depressing, on the contrary, because it has a kind of truthfulness about it. We think that we are alone in our loneliness, and that it is only us who feel this way. But his paintings say something different. And it is not just you.

There are also works where people are together. The Gate of Love is one of them. There the figures have body contact, where they touch each other. That is Wiig Hansen's love language, and it is very physical. Where other artists would paint glances and longing, he paints skin against skin.

One of the strongest works in this context is Menneskerridt from 1959. Red people standing upright and holding strings in their hands. Other people in green colors crawling on all fours or lying stretched out on the ground. The strings run between them like threads in a puppet show. It is not love or a community. It is an image of dominance and submission.

It's a strange contrast to the love works. Where the other figures meet each other in physical contact, these people are connected by a leash, like an animal being led. It's as if he's saying we've gone from community to something else. From community to capitalism.

18 faces and you see yourself

You enter the next room, Human First, and you stand in front of 18 portraits. 18 faces side by side. All painted in the same period. Colorful, expressive and each with its own expression.

You think, how are they different? Here are 18 individuals. But then you realize, after a short moment, are they even different? You see the same person and you see yourself.

We are convinced that we are all unique, each and every one of us. But aren't we fundamentally the same? What makes us lonely is perhaps exactly that belief. That we believe no one can understand what we have inside us. That our experiences are so special that they cannot be shared. But here are 18 faces hanging, and they are all us. Deep down, we are the same.

This is also where you feel how the works reflect you. If you stand in a dark place in your life, you see the dystopian. You see the demons, the anxiety, the existential loneliness. If you stand in a good place, you see the life force. You see the energy, and there is a lot of it. It is the same wall. It is you who moves you.

Creative urge

You move on, and then it all opens up.

You are standing in a large room where everything is gathered. The room is called Skabertrang, and that is exactly what you meet. A person who could not stand still.
On one wall hangs Wandering Without a Goal from 1978. A painting on oil and wood that fills the entire wall. Figures wander in an endless line, body after body. Some stand in the foreground, others in the background, but none of them make eye contact. They look past each other as if they are in their own dimension.

On another wall are the preparations for the stained glass mosaics in Kastrup Church. Large naked human figures in blue and reddish-brown lines, painted on plastic, arranged like windows.

Here you will also find a plaster version of The Gate of Love from 1987, Wiig Hansen's relief for the Royal Theatre.

And then there are the 5 mannequins without faces, dressed in the costumes from Troilus and Cressida at the Royal Danish Theatre in 1968. It's Shakespeare, and it's Wiig Hansen, and it's an artist who could also draw a person in the clothes.

On a third wall hang 45 drawings, placed close to the wall in wooden frames.

ARoS has chosen to open up the architecture, and each individual work gets air around it. They stand alone, and yet they belong together. Big impressions require big spaces. This space is hard to put into words. You have to go in there and feel it yourself.

When you stand in this space, you begin to see the pattern. Wiig Hansen's artworks are full of people, but the people are alone. Even when there are several of them in a picture, they look past each other.

A multi-artist

I have a huge respect for artists who throw themselves into everything. Wiig Hansen was a sculptor and painter. He was a draftsman and graphic artist and he made films and stage designs. He spent 10 years making the stained glass windows in Kastrup Church. He created the Gate of Love in 1987, which to this day is the staff entrance at the Royal Danish Theatre. He once decided during an Easter holiday to make a thousand drawings. He reached 500 before his body said stop.

People everywhere

The Kastrup Church is a story that has stuck with me. Wiig Hansen spent 10 years decorating the entire church. Altarpiece, stained glass mosaics, walls and ceiling. And there is no Jesus on the cross anywhere. There are ordinary people all over the place.

He believed that they were what the church was about. They were the ones who needed a place to look out over. Like the fishermen's wives who looked out to sea and waited for their husbands to come home. You can see the preparations for the stained glass windows in this exhibition. It's beautiful, and it's different, and it tells you something about an artist who thought people through in everything he did.

The self-portraits he dared to make

The exhibition ends with the self-portraits. They hang on a red wall, 16 small black and white pictures, all of his own face. It's The Unbearable Portrait from 1972 to 1976, a series of linoleum prints on paper. Some of the faces are grotesque. Some are distorted and some are just tired. He created self-portraits throughout his life, and this room shows how far he was willing to go.

That's the point. If you or I were to take a self-portrait, we would want to be seen from our best side. We would choose a good angle, put our hair up, smile a little. Wiig Hansen does the opposite. He cuts what we want to hide away into the linoleum. Fear, aggression, doubt and sadness. What we as humans do not want to be responsible for. What we deny.

He prints it on paper and hangs it up so that we are forced to look. Society at that time couldn't talk about it. People didn't verbalize anxiety and vulnerability and what wasn't working. Today we are slowly opening up more to it. And that's precisely why his works are more relevant than ever.

He dared to say it out loud before the rest of us had a language for it. And then there is an offer for all guests. Next to the portraits is a table with pencils and a mirror, so you can make your own self-portrait. You can hang it on the wall or take it home.

After standing in front of his 16 faces, where he has shown what he did not hide, you will have the chance to do the same. How do you see yourself? Not the polished version, but the honest one.

Nature is underneath it all

Although the exhibition revolves around people, nature is at the heart of it all. The sons talk about the summer house at Skagen and about Råbjerg Mile, about the wind and rain and the raw landscape by the North Sea, which was with him in the studio. Once you see it, you can't ignore it again.

There is something weather-beaten about the works. Something windy with sand and storm and rough coast. The people in his paintings are not only fighting with each other. They are also fighting with the weather around them.

And then there's the humor

Wiig Hansen had humor. He was the entertainer in the company. He could do quirky things and make people laugh. He was also shy and nervous, fighting demons within himself, but that didn't rule out the fun. It's both at the same time.

Look for the humor in the works when you're there. In a figure that stands a little crooked. In a facial expression that's more whimsical than fierce. It's not just in the darkness that he is. It's not just the light either. It's in the whole person.

Børge Mogensen in the seating furniture

Around the exhibition are Børge Mogensen's J39 chairs. Mogensen and Wiig Hansen were friends. They were part of the same creative network in the 50s and 60s, where furniture designers and artists met across their professions. Furniture manufacturers sold art in their stores and artists made furniture frames.
It's these kinds of intersections that make an exhibition rich. You get to sit on a Folk Chair while looking at a large painting, and it feels like they belong together.

When you leave there

I left the exhibition with a desire to go back again. That is perhaps the best thing an exhibition can do. I left with images on my retina that I could not quite shake. A wandering aimlessly moving across a blue wall. A red figure standing upright and a green one lying down, and a string between them.

And I left with the feeling that I had just spent an hour with a person I had never met before. A person who passed away in 1997, but who still had something to say to me here in 2026.

Practical information

• Exhibition: Svend Wiig Hansen, Walking, Falling, Standing
• Where: ARoS Aarhus Art Museum, level 5
• When: May 23, 2026 to August 30, 2026
• Price: Free with annual pass, otherwise after paid admission
• Curator: Jannie Haagemann
• ARoS: See more at the exhibition at ARoS