The Inner Work of Leonardo
Anker Vandal
Cloudbursts of sienna bloom across large-format canvases, effusive in their warmth. With time, an apparition appears to hover through. Below the surface of Leonardo Anker Vandal’s Adagio paintings, a disquiet gathers force, drawing the viewer into the fluid mirror of minimal abstraction. In the work and world of the self-taught Danish artist, beauty and sorrow are intimately entangled. Embedded in the existential preoccupations of his 18th-century Romantic muses – Keats, Yates, Mahler – his work is forged through the “excavation of memories;” a personal therapeutic process with widespread resonance. From his studio in Brescia, Italy, accompanied by his beloved Border Collie, Nemorino, Anker Vandal speaks with radical openness about the arc of his autodidacticism, existence outside the art establishment, and the figurative trail of breadcrumbs he hopes to leave for those who need it most.
