“The Enigmatic and Haunted Lives of Else Hagen’s Women”
**Else Hagen: A Pioneer of Feminist Expressionism**
In the often underexplored archives of artistic history, Norwegian painter Else Hagen stands out as a visionary whose works brilliantly merge vivid color palettes with piercing social commentary. Best known for her monumental public installations during the mid-20th century, Hagen’s intimate oil paintings have recently gained much-deserved attention, particularly through exhibitions like *Else Hagen: Between People* at Norway’s National Museum. This retrospective illuminates the depth of Hagen’s work, underscoring her unique ability to portray the quiet—and sometimes tumultuous—psychology of women navigating a world rigid with gendered expectations.
### Revisiting Hagen: The Personal Meets the Political
Born in Norway in 1914, Else Hagen was a pioneer in a time when societal expectations around art and women’s roles were both stifling. She entered adulthood during what historians refer to as Norway’s “housewife era” of the 1950s—a conservative period where domesticity was idealized and women were expected to prioritize family over self-fulfillment. It was against this backdrop that Hagen created her vibrant yet disquieting canvases, empowering feminine narratives that had previously been relegated to the shadows.
For Hagen, femininity was not simply depicted as peaceful or idyllic. Instead, her work highlights layered, and often conflicted, relationships between women, their surroundings, and themselves. Feminism pulses at the core of her artistry, but it rejects sanitized portrayals of nurturing matriarchs or picture-perfect sisterhood. Hagen’s women are multidimensional: flawed, heroic, vulnerable, and occasionally defiant. Through her art, she candidly acknowledged the alienation, infantilization, and sexualization imposed on women, themes that remain relevant today.
### The Feminine Interior: Painting Women in Their Complexity
Hagen’s canvases are electric with color and energy, but beneath the rainbow hues lie undercurrents of angst and contemplation. In “The Secret” (1945), for instance, four young girls curl together around an open book, their bodies glowing in tones of yellow, orange, and red. At their side, a separate figure watches cautiously, her inward gaze suggesting she may know the complexity of the stolen secrets depicted in the diary-like pages. In this piece, Hagen captures a feminine moment rife with intimacy, betrayal, and unknowable subtext—qualities often scorned as subject matter in “serious” art during that era.
Similarly, “Floral Priest Collar” (1956/57), shows a young woman dressed in an ephemeral skirt of paper and flowers, hiding her face behind her hands. While the colors of the piece are playful, her posture evokes resistance, as if shielding herself from prying eyes. The tension between the festive aesthetic and the emotional undercurrent reflects Hagen’s nuanced exploration of feminine agency. Her figures whisper of defiance in realms where women are often denied autonomy.
### A Trailblazing Career in Visual Arts
Hagen’s vibrant, feminist-leaning narratives resonate within her broader trailblazing life. Despite societal pressures that pushed marriage and motherhood over career aspirations, Hagen pursued art relentlessly. She became a major figure in Norway’s public art scene, using monumental works to blend abstraction with social consciousness. However, her oil paintings reveal a more personal dimension, making her retrospective all the more significant.
Her piece “The Roles Assigned” (1950) illustrates this duality. The painting depicts three nude women surrounded by fluttering pieces of newsprint, two of them masked and one unmasking herself with alarm. The scene suggests a stripping away of societal façades and expectations, leaving the rawness of identity in its wake. Unapologetically centered on women, the painting not only critiques the confining roles society imposes, but also celebrates the courage it takes to confront them.
### The Timeless Modernity of Hagen’s Vision
Hagen’s ability to distill universal truths about gender, identity, and human relationships gives her work a timeless resonance. Even her early work, such as a masterfully composed “Self-Portrait” from 1940, emphasizes her modern approach. Painted when she was just 26, the portrait layers her face with pinks and blues, a striking departure from naturalistic self-portraits of that era. Her expression, poised and slightly detached, hints at the introspection and confidence that define her entire body of work.
One of her most striking attributes, even years after her passing in 2010, is her ability to embody the interior lives of her subjects without defaulting to clichés or simplistic messages. Her women don’t merely brood or celebrate—they keep secrets, defy expectations, and sometimes contradict themselves. Hagen’s work thus avoids the pitfalls of romanticized feminism, instead offering a raw and honest look at the female condition.
### Remembering Else Hagen: A Legacy Worth Celebrating
The *Else Hagen: Between People* exhibition serves as a