Provenance: Acquired directly from the artist by the present owner's family. Not previously offered for sale.

The double painting is a rarely-available example of Carl-Henning Pedersen's art in its very earliest, formative phase. In the years through to 1940, the artist underwent rapid personal and artistic development, influenced by the European artistic avant-garde; in particular, his friend and mentor Egill Jacobsen encouraged him to break away from naturalism and adopt an abstract mode of expression instead. Carl-Henning Pedersen and Egill Jacobsen met in 1935; sharing discussions and inspiration helped each of them along their individual pathways. The mask - inspired by ritual and “primitive” African wood carvings - was already an important element in the development of international modernism as early as the beginning of the 20th century. From a Danish perspective, Egill Jacobsen and Carl-Henning Pedersen's mask paintings bring the motif up to date and take it a step further. Towards the end of the 1930s, in fact, the National Museum of Denmark's collection of Oceanic Art expanded considerably and it was put on display again; this was a very tangible and rich source of inspiration at the time.

The work in the auction has all the characteristics that place it precisely in the time around 1940: the explicit mask motif with pronounced black contour lines that were already starting to disappear in the early 1940s. And there is the subdued or delicate and cold approach to colour that is also typical of this particular brief but crucial period.