Else Alfelt

Else Alfelt (16 September 1910 – 9 August 1974) was a Danish artist who specialized in abstract paintings, and a member of the avant-garde COBRA movement - one of its only two female members. Alfelt was involved with the major avant-garde art movements in Denmark from the 1930s through the 1950s, working in an abstract idiom of colorful prismatic compositions. She was married to Carl-Henning Pedersen, another prominent CoBrA member.

Early life and education Alfelt was born in Copenhagen to the parents Carl Valdemar Ahlefeldt (1882–1954) and Edith Alexandra Regine Julie Thomsen (1893–1938). She began to paint in an early age and remained self-taught as an artist. When her parents divorced while Else was very young, she was sent away to an orphanage by her father's new wife. Alfelt learned to paint around age 12 by trying to capture staff and other children at the orphanage.

At age 15, Alfelt attended the Technical School in Copenhagen for two years. Her training worked to prepare her to apply to the Art Academy in Copenhagen where she was ultimately turned down. According to her museum website, “the rejection was made on the grounds that she already possessed the necessary painting skills.” In addition to paintings she also produced several mosaics.

She was awarded the Tagea Brandt Rejselegat in 1961.

Notable artworks

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image1 = width1 = 250 caption1 = The Young Communist (1933) Portrait of Carl-Henning Pedersen.

“Abstract Women- Else Alfelt and Marianne Grønnow” – Carl Henning Pedersen og Else Alfelts museum; March 2015-August 2015. Abstract women documents two Danish abstract female painters who have gone overlooked by history, and overshadowed by their husbands’ works. While the two artists vary greatly in style and technique, the CHPEA museum brings them together for this exhibition to bring attention to the ways their art challenges established societal norms.

Legacy 'Carl Henning Pedersen og Else Alfelts Museum' outside Herning. Else Alfelts Vej in the Ørestad district of Copenhagen is named after her. In September 2010, the museum displayed a large-scale exhibition called “Else Alfelt – The Aesthetics of Emptiness.” The exhibition was shown for five months to celebrate what would have been Alfelt's 100th birthday. The museum page description of the event calls her “one of the most significant women artists in Danish modernism.”