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Terra sancta – Exhibition in Beirut 
  
The opening of the art exhibition takes place at the UNESCO Palace in Beirut Tuesday the 8th of June, 6 p.m. The exhibition will last for four weeks. Opening speeches will be held by H.E. Minister of Culture Selim Warde and H.E. Ambassador of Norway Aud Lise Norheim. The artist will be present. The exhibition is curated by Daniel Johansen and project manager is Venke Aarethun. 

The exhibition will later visit the National Museum of Damascus and The National Gallery of Amman in late 2010 and early 2011. 


Download images in print quality (300 dpi):
  
Invasion (Triptykon) 
The Birds of Gaza 
Requiem for the children of Gaza 
Gullvåg paints on the wall in the West bank

  
Press release: Vernisage for the exhibition Terra Sancta, الأرض المقدسة
 
On the 8th of june at 18.00 His Excellency the Lebanese Minister of Culture, and Her Excellency the ambassador of Norway in Lebanon will open the exhibition Terra Sancta, الأرض المقدسة by the Norwegian artist Håkon Gullvåg at the UNESCO palace of Beirut.

Gullvåg is one of Norways most honored figurative painters. He had his brake through at young age, when included in the National Gallery collection after his first exhibition in Oslo in 1983. One of his main themes since the 1980s has been a variation between fragments of autobiographical memory and surrealism. In his paintings Gullvåg often include strong references to great European masters like Fransisco Goya or Diego Velázquez. This varies from subtle symbols or ghostly figures in his autobiographical works to more humoristic paraphrases of the depiction of European royalty in the 16th, 17th and 18th century.
 
Gullvåg also marked him self at an early age as a renewer of portraiture. Since the late 1990s he has made official portraits of a pantheon of profiled Norwegians varying from actors and lawmen to politicians, writers, composers and kings. His most prestigious projects without doubt being the official portraits of H.M. King Harald V og H.M. Queen Sonja for Oslo City Hall and The Royal Palace of Oslo.
 
On the 29th of March 2009 Håkon Gullvåg opened his second separate exhibition in Trondheim Art Museum. The exhibition was originally supposed to be a retrospective view over the artist’s production between 2001 and 2009, but the Israeli invasion of the Gaza-strip on the 27th of December 2008 changed the whole concept of the exhibition.

As a reaction to the terrible pictures that was brought to Norway of the Israeli attacks on the civilian population, Gullvåg started one of his most aggressive and fastest productions to this day. More than half of the works that was presented to the public when the exhibition was opened on the 29th of March had been painted since the invasion started. The exhibition was widely debated in the Norwegian press, and it was proclaimed as one of the most important political art exhibitions in Norway that decade. As a consequence of this the exhibit created a visitor record in the Art Museum.

The exhibition is the painter’s homage to the children of Gaza and focuses on the child’s fate in the inferno of war. The exhibition will start its Middle Eastern tour at The UNESCO Palace of Beirut, and it will later visit the National Museum of Damascus and The National Gallery of Amman in late 2010 and early 2011.