Collections
Christen Sveaas Art Foundation was established by Christen Sveaas in October 2019. The object is to manage, protect, convey and lend artworks from the foundation’s collection to promote Norwegian and international art from the last 100 years.
Loans are made available to Norwegian and international museums, organizations and institutions. Lenders must meet all safety requirements during the entire loan period. For more information and loan requests, please email collection@csk.art.
The park expands with one or more sculptures each year. Today there are 51 works by prominent contemporary artists such as Pierre Huyghe, Carol Bove, Ida Ekblad, Yayoi Kusama, Fernando Botero, Claes Oldenburg, Lynda Benglis, Tony Cragg, Olafur Eliasson and Anish Kapoor. Many of them are site-specific, inspired by the cultural heritage, nature and history of Kistefos. The works range from the monumental to the discreet and unobtrusive. The sculptures evolve with the change of weather and season, and the sculpture park is open all year.
Christen Sveaas (b. 1956 in Oslo) is a Norwegian businessman, art collector, investor and donator who has been a collector for more than 40 years. In 1996 he founded the Kistefos Museum on the grounds of his grandfather Anders Sveaas’ old wood pulp mill at Jevnaker, Norway. The museum has one of the largest sculpture gardens in Europe, an industrial museum and two exhibition spaces for contemporary art. The museum building The Twist, designed by BIG architects, opened in 2019.
Sveaas developed an interest in art and collecting at an early age. Among his first acquisitions were paintings by Harald Sohlberg, Johan Christian Dahl, Frits Thaulow and Gustav Wentzel. The collection was extended through the acquisition of works from the Norwegian realism, modernism and post-war movements. The collection became more international in the 1990s, when several Norwegian galleries extended their exhibition programs beyond the border. Howard Hodgkin, Martin Kippenberger, Albert Oehlen, Christopher Wool, Keith Haring and Ross Bleckner have been key artists in the collection since the 1990s. After the new millennium, Sveaas began to follow the practices of artists such as Edward Ruscha, Marina Abramović, Gilbert & George, David Salle, Lari Pittman, Bjarne Melgaard, Adrian Ghenie, Andreas Gursky, Louise Bourgeois, Ida Ekblad, Paulina Olowska and Hurvin Anderson. Christen Sveaas still holds an important private art collection that continues to grow.
