Ib Geertsen
Danish artist (1919-2009)
Ib Geertsen (7 January 1919 – 3 June 2009) was a Danish painter and sculptor. He began as a Naturalist but later turned to Concrete art.
Biography
Born in Copenhagen, Geertsen first trained as a gardener (1934–39) before concentrating on art in which he was self-taught. In 1937, he associated with Thorvald Hansen and other painters from Aalborg, developing an interest in Naturalism and painting dark still lifes and landscapes inspired by Paul Cézanne and Amedeo Modigliani.
In 1943, he moved to Copenhagen adopting a more spontaneous impasto, surrealistic technique in his painting. In 1947, he was a co-founded of the Linien II artists association, which concentrated on concrete art. He developed an approach based on rounded areas with solid colouring which he employed in decorations for schools and hospitals in Næstved, Aalborg and Copenhagen in accordance with a precise colour scheme. Works consisting of circles and squares became his widely recognized idiom. Later he created a variety of mobile and hanging works, decorating the Ministry for Foreign Affairs (1980) and the concert hall in Statens Museum for Kunst (1998).
Awards
In 1978, Geertsen was awarded the Eckersberg Medal and, in 1991, the Thorvaldsen Medal.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Ib Geertsen” is danish artist (1919-2009). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Geertsen, Danish and artist, not as a finished interpretation.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q12318000. VIAF identifies the subject as 17322432. The Library of Congress control number is n91086838. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1919, 2009, 1934 and 1937.
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This entry incorporates text from “Ib Geertsen” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.