Else Alfelt

Else Alfelt (1910–1974) was a Danish painter who gradually developed her visual language outside academic training. Active in experimental groups in Denmark, she later participated in the international exchanges of CoBrA. Her abstract painting remained closely connected to nature. Mountains, skies and cosmic spaces provided starting points for images in which colour conveyed inner experience as much as landscapes encountered during her travels. Observation and imagination work together within these compositions.

After the Second World War, journeys to Norway, Iceland and Lapland informed her watercolours. She also made mosaics, exploring the light reflected and broken by their materials. A visit to Japan in 1967 deepened her interest in gardens and meditation. In series of overlapping, coloured circles, repetition became a means of concentration while continually producing fresh relationships across the picture surface.