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Art: Marriage Go-Round

3 minute read
TIME

When dimpled Skating Star Sonja Henie, 48, got married for the third time in 1956, she made it clear that some changes would have to be made in her new husband’s life. Norwegian Shipowner Niels Onstad, 51, had been collecting modern paintings for 25 years, and the walls of his Manhattan apartment were covered with them. “If I am going to move in here, you’ll have to get rid of these ghastly paintings,” said Sonja. “You’ll get used to them,” answered Onstad patiently. Now Sonja Henie is not only used to modern painting but one of its leading enthusiasts.

Last week 102 paintings of the Henie-Onstad collection were on view in Oslo, the first time they had ever been shown in public (see color). Norwegians have been so eager to see the show that the railroads offered special rates to take people to Oslo. Apart from some paintings, apparently bought more for prestige than merit, the collection as a whole dazzled both public and critics. This week the exhibit packs up to start a grand tour that will take it to Copenhagen, Stockholm, Hamburg, The Hague, Zurich, Paris, London and possibly New York.

Sonja Henie herself owned a Gainsborough and a Renoir before she married Onstad, but to her own surprise she quickly caught her husband’s enthusiasm for more contemporary art. Since their marriage, the collection has more than doubled, and almost all of the new acquisitions have been abstract. “At first, I guess it was a kind of sport,” says Sonja of her purchases. “Just to tease my husband. Very soon it became something more. I became fascinated by the abstract things and felt I understood their meaning.”

The collection ranges from the Norwegian Edvard Munch to Canada’s Pollock-like abstract expressionist, Jean-Paul Riopelle. Bonnard. Villon, Matisse, Picasso, Leger, Poliakoff and Rouault are all represented. One of Paul Klee’s best-known works. Seven O’Clock over the Roofs, looks like a toy town built with brown and greenish blocks. Oslo had never seen a finer group of Juan Crises, nor had it been exposed to Surrealist Max Ernst.

The show also offered a delicate “texturol-ogy” by Jean Dubuffet—a painting that looks at first like a piece of kitchen linoleum but then turns into a vision of outer space. The thick black crisscrossings of Pierre Soulages nicely complement Hans Hartung’s “psychograms,” which try to portray emotion through tapered lines of pure force.

Sonja Henie’s own favorite works these days are the flamboyant but powerful abstractions of Russian-born Nicolas de Stael. She owns seven of them—quite a change from Messrs. Gainsborough and Renoir.

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