The art of Elsa Thoresen
“Objects of the Elements”
Photo courtesy of the estate of Elsa Thoresen.
Elsa Thoresen at her easel in Oslo, circa 1925.
Photo courtesy of the estate of Elsa Thoresen and Cascadia Art Museum, Edmonds, Wash.
Elsa Thoresen_19.tif: Elsa Thoresen (1906–1994), Untitled, circa 1948. Oil on board, 13×16 inches.
From Dec. 3, 2025, to March 8, 2026, the Cascadia Art Museum in Edmonds, Wash., will host the first American exhibition dedicated to the work of Norwegian-American artist Elsa Thoresen. The show, “Objects of the Elements,” is complemented by a new book of the same name, published and distributed by the University of Washington Press, offering a closer look at Thoresen’s life and art.
Elsa Thoresen, born in 1906, is beginning to emerge as an important American surrealist and abstract painter whose work has been gaining recognition in Europe for the past 10 or more years. She was featured in the important 2023 exhibition, “Surréalisme au Féminin?” at the Musée de Montmartre in Paris and is now the subject of a book and retrospective at Cascadia Art Museum in Edmonds.
After immigrating from Norway in 1889, her father, Dr. Thore Thoresen, started a medical practice in Seattle before moving in 1898 to Minnesota, where he married Alice Johnson and had three children, with Elsa being in the middle. Dr. Thoresen was also an accomplished classical musician specializing in cello. The family home was filled with music with daughter Marie on piano, Elsa on violin and son Nils also on cello. After living in Minneapolis for several years, the Thoresens traveled to Oslo, Norway, arriving in 1920. To accomplish this, Dr. Thoresen acted as physician for the voyage on the passenger ship Stavangerfjord, part of the Norwegian American Line. Unlike her siblings’ musical aspirations, Elsa was determined to be a painter. In 1924, she enrolled at the Norwegian National Academy of Craft and Art Industry in Oslo, where she remained until 1927.
Photo courtesy of the estate of Elsa Thoresen and Cascadia Art Museum, Edmonds, Wash.
Elsa Thoresen_19.tif: Elsa Thoresen (1906–1994), Untitled, circa 1948. Oil on board, 13×16 inches.
She was initially trained in an academic tradition, with a focus on the graphic arts, including etchings and drawings of landscapes and portraiture. After three years at the academy, she studied at the Norwegian National Academy of Fine Arts, Oslo, beginning in 1927 where she met the Danish artist Vilhelm Bjerke-Petersen (1909-1957). She remained there until 1930 while also attending classes at the Académie Royale des Beaux-arts in Brussels, Belgium.
In 1929, Bjerke-Petersen, now Elsa’s serious love interest, traveled to Paris and then Bauhaus Dessau, where he studied with Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky.
By 1934, Vilhelm was an active writer focusing on art theory, culminating in his landmark book, Surrealism: Outlook on life, expression of life, art. After nearly eight years together, Elsa and Vilhelm were married Feb. 20, 1935, in Copenhagen.
Photo courtesy of the Estate of Elsa Thoresen and Cascadia Art Museum, Edmonds, Wash.
Elsa Thoresen (1906–1994), Untitled, circa 1970. Oil on canvas, 24×40 inches.
As one of the early advocates for Surrealism in Scandinavia, Vilhelm became highly influential as a writer, curator, and artist. His enthusiasm drew Elsa into abandoning her previous work for abstraction and Surrealism.
By 1936, Elsa had assembled an impressive group of new paintings reflecting her shift into Surrealism. Her subject matter was personal and guided by dreams and analytical associations. That year, she debuted her work in a three-person exhibition with Vilhelm and the Swedish Modernist, Erik Olson at the prestigious Arnbak Art Gallery in Copenhagen.
Photo courtesy of the estate of Elsa Thoresen and Cascadia Art Museum, Edmonds, Wash.
Berget i natten (The Mountain at Night) by Elsa Thoresen (1906–1994), painted around 1946. Oil on board, 13×16¼ inches.
The following year, Vilhelm’s father, Carl V. Petersen (1868–1938) wrote an introductory text to the 11th volume of the series Danske Kunstnere (Danish Artists), a themed publication regarding the leading surrealists in Denmark. Although her association with Denmark was strictly through marriage, her inclusion in the book signaled her arrival as a serious, talented artist.
In 1937, Elsa and Vilhelm traveled to Paris to be part of the prestigious L’Exposition internationale du surréalisme organized by André Breton and poet Paul Éluard. The landmark exhibition took place in the Galérie Beaux-Arts from Jan. 17 to Feb. 24, 1938, and featured the leading surrealist painters of the period.
Although she was Norwegian American, Breton selected two of her paintings as part of the Danish group of surrealists whose work he admired. Breton reproduced her painting, “Atmospheric Landscape,” in 1936 in his Abridged Dictionary of Surrealism in 1938. That year also found her painting “Abstract Composition” of 1935 illustrated in Sophie Taeuber-Arp’s magazine, Plastique#3, 1938.
With their newfound success in Paris, Elsa and Vilhelm were given a two-person exhibition at Harald Holst Halvorsen’s Art Gallery in Oslo in 1939. Halvorsen was an important dealer, collector, and preservationist of the works of Edvard Munch and other leading Norwegian artists of the period.
On April 9, 1940, Denmark became occupied by Nazi Germany. Three months later, Elsa gave birth to a son, followed by a daughter in 1941.
For the next few years, she was busy raising the children, which left her very little time to paint. Still under Nazi occupation, Vilhelm’s political and artistic statements against fascism and Nazi Germany began to catch up with him. For fear of retaliation, the family traveled undercover on a commercial Danish vessel to Sweden where they arrived in the spring of 1944. Assisted by artist friends, the family lived in the town of Söndrum and then various locations in and around Halmstad and Stockholm. Living near the coast, the family would take solace from the uncertainty of their future by visiting the peaceful beaches. Elsa began collecting small pieces of driftwood that had been eroded and sculpted by the sea. These objects would soon appear in her paintings and provided her with a unique and personal iconography.
The couple were now exhibiting regularly in Sweden with Elsa focusing on her unique surrealist compositions of driftwood and other natural elements.
After the war, Vilhelm won a Guggenheim Fellowship and the family traveled to New York City in 1946. There, the couple met Johnny Gouveia (1913-2007), who recently returned from military duty and enrolled in art classes under the G.I. Bill. They befriended him while he studied with Vilhelm. Upon their return to Sweden, Elsa’s work was included in the 1947 International Surrealist exhibition organized by André Breton and Marcel Duchamp held at Gallery Maeght in Paris.
Between 1948 and 1950, Elsa and Vilhelm were given exhibitions in prominent venues throughout Sweden and Europe.
Their collaborative exhibitions ended along with their relationship when Vilhelm fell in love with Swedish entertainer Eva-Lisa Lennartsson, thus ending his marriage to Elsa. She returned to the United States with her children and visited her mother and sister in Washington, D.C. After reuniting with Johnny Gouveia in New York, they developed a relationship after Elsa’s divorce and married in 1953.
Elsa and the children accompanied Johnny to his job assignments in New York where they lived for a brief period.
When Elsa’s brother Nils moved to Seattle in 1953, he sent for his mother and sister Marie to join him. Because of Johnny’s ability to transfer easily within his profession to another location, the Puget Sound region presented a logical opportunity for relocation. He, Elsa, and the children moved to Seattle around 1954 to rejoin the rest of her family.
As the family acclimated to their new environment, Elsa resumed painting using a lyrical form of abstraction.
Even though Seattle boasted a very impressive number of successful artists, Elsa never became involved in any of the local exhibitions or organizations. She went on to produce a highly accomplished body of work during her years in Seattle, living a quiet life and painting as time allowed.
Elsa continued to paint until her death on Aug. 20, 1994.
This article originally appeared in the December 2025 issue of The Norwegian American.
