Bodil Kaalund

Bodil Marie Kaalund-Jørgensen (1930–2016) was an award-winning Danish painter, textile artist and writer, who is remembered above all for her artwork in Danish churches and for her Bible illustrations. She was also a major contributor to the recognition of Greenland's cultural heritage, thanks in part to her Grønlands Kunst, published in English in 1983 as The Art of Greenland.

Early life and education

Born in Silkeborg on 8 November 1930, Bodil Marie Kaalund was the daughter of the painter Martin Kaalund-Jørgensen (1889–1952) and Hilda Jenny Rasmussen (1896–1984), a teacher. It was thanks to her father that she became interested in painting from an early age.

Kaalund attended the state school in Lyngby. In her early teens, she became interested in religious art. This was reinforced in 1946 when she discovered the work of Edvard Munch while on holiday in Norway. When she was just 18, she exhibited two landscape paintings at Den Frie Udstilling's autumn exhibition. In 1950, Kaalund married the painter Nikolaj Nielsen. They had one child together, Magnus, but the marriage was dissolved in 1976. She decorated a total of 27 churches, including Solbjerg Church and Hvidovre's Strandmark Church.

She also illustrated several religious works with Biblical scenes. Her major work in this connected was the new authorized Danish edition of the Bible which was published in 1992. It contained 159 illustrations. The original watercolours can be seen in the Lemvig Museum of Religious Art. Many of them are based on scenes from the countryside around the Limfjord and the west coast of Denmark.

Bodil Kaalund died in her sleep at her home in Lyngby on 22 December 2016.

Awards Kaalund had received many awards, including the Greenlandic Cultural Prize (2000) and the Academy's N. L. Høyen Medal (2002).