Art Beat Review: Elsa Thoresen’s Surrealist journey

At the entrance of Cascadia Art Museum’s Objects of the Elements exhibition is a large photograph of artist Elsa Cecilie Thoresen (1906-1994) at her easel, turning toward the camera and meeting the visitors’ gaze. It was taken around 1925, perhaps while she was studying at the Norwegian National Academy of Craft and Art Industry in Oslo, according to her biography. What does she want us to understand about her work and herself?

Stepping into the first gallery, the walls are filled with works of varying sizes, styles and media. This space encompasses Thoresen’s early artistic roots in Scandinavia, where she emerged both as an art student and as a leading figure in the Surrealist movement in Scandinavia. Born on May 1, 1906, in Benson, Minnesota, to a Norwegian father and an American mother, Thoresen and her family moved to Oslo in 1920. Her father and siblings were musicians, and although she studied music herself, painting became her chosen mode of expression.

While attending the Norwegian National Academy of Fine Arts in Oslo, Thoresen met Danish artist and writer Vilhelm Bjerke-Petersen. They married in Copenhagen in 1935 after nearly eight years together. Bjerke-Petersen also studied at the Bauhaus in Dessau (1930-31) with Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky. His paintings were transformed: Planes flattened, compositions were bisected and geometric forms emerged. During his absence, Thoresen continued to explore her interest in modern art.

By 1934, Bjerke-Petersen had emerged as one of the earliest advocates of Surrealism in Scandinavia as an active writer on art and theory, publishing Surrealismen: Livsanskuelse, Livsudfoldelse, Kunst. In 1935, he curated the International Art Exhibition: Cubism = Surrealism in Copenhagen, an exhibition that introduced works by René Magritte, Salvador Dalí, Max Ernst, Man Ray, Yves Tanguy and Paul Klee. The accompanying catalogue included a short essay by André Breton.

Thoresen, influenced by Surrealism and her husband’s passion for it, transformed these ideas into her own work while developing her own unique artistic voice. Together, the two of them were at the forefront of introducing Surrealism in Scandinavia. According to Cascadia Museum Curator David F. Martin, Thoresen continues to be represented in Europe through books and exhibitions on women Surrealists, although her work has remained absent from the American canon.

On one wall, a small painting from 1938 catches my attention. Here, Thoresen employs the classic painting composition where an object is placed in the center just below the middle. A small blue cup is at the center with what appears to be a flame rising from within, illuminating the center while the rest is pitch-dark. It is unassuming, but it feels like the beginning of an idea – something that has yet to be revealed.

As I wander through the first gallery, I begin to notice similarities – disappearing in some and reappearing elsewhere. For example, in a group of lithographs, the butterfly and circle appear repeatedly, linking the works to one another with the circle making its appearance in paint.

Thoresen and Bjerke-Petersen traveled to Paris in 1937 and met Max Ernst, Yves Tanguy, Kurt Seligmann, Jean Arp, Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Marcel Duchamp, André Breton and Kandinsky, according to a 1976 interview. In 1938, they exhibited in L’Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme, curated by Breton and Paul Éluard, and she was one of only a few women to be included. She showed The Light of the World – the Light of Darkness (1937), another image of a candle, and I Do Not Know (1937).

On the opposite wall, two paintings, Untitled (1948) and The Mountain at Night (1946), reveal her fascination with driftwood. She collected driftwood along the southern coast of Sweden and later on Orcas Island. Due to Bjerke-Petersen’s anti-Fascist and anti-Nazi political satire the two fled from Denmark to Sweden in a small wooden boat in 1944 and settled near Halmstad. 

A glass case displays several of these driftwood pieces alongside a blue-green glass orb. The driftwood’s stippled surfaces and curves remain intact, and their elongated forms reappear throughout her work.

The driftwood-inspired painting that is untitled plays with perspective, drawing us in toward what I see as a forest. The colors are soft corals, purples and blues. The Mountain at Night raises different questions: What lies beyond the deep blue indigo space? The title is curious, and it makes me think of a fjord cliff-side with its weathered striations similar to the surface of driftwood, perhaps one Thoresen once saw. 

Here, too, is blue indigo, a large piece of fabric with embroidered sketches and signatures from members of the Halmstad Group, including artist Kurt Schwitters. The names trace a network of artists who welcomed Thoresen and Bjerke-Petersen during their time in Sweden. The fabric work is a record of belonging and of artistic exchange. Thoresen’s Swedish period is tactile and intimate.

In the central gallery, the room’s mood shifts. Here, Seattle-period paintings are seen, larger and more uniform in size, palette and composition. Martin describes them as “lyrical abstractions,” a fitting name for the flowing forms that suggest the rhythm of music, abstracted into colors and shapes.

In 1953, Thoresen and Bjerke-Petersen divorced after he left her. She moved back to the U.S. with her two children to join her mother and sister in Washington, D.C. That same year, she married Johnny Gouveia in New York, a close friend of Thoresen and Bjerke-Petersen. 

In 1954, the couple relocated to Seattle to join her brother, Nils, who had taken a job with Boeing while continuing as a classical cellist. As the family settled into their new life, Thoresen slowly returned to painting.

I am drawn to a painting of a large egg-shaped form (Untitled, 1975), painted predominantly in black and white and shades of gray. The outer egg encloses a tiny, pink egg shape. It evokes a feeling of protection, and it makes sense that themes of motherhood might appear. Her paintings feel soft; the edges never harsh, unlike Bjerke-Petersen’s. She seems to deliberately blend the color transitions, giving her forms a voluminous quality. Ribbon-like shapes, reminiscent of arms, appear to hold and shelter the inner form.

Scanning the room, I notice biomorphic shapes and softened black lines – like strings on a musical instrument – that slice through planes. Both movement and stillness coexist on each canvas. Forms appear increasingly magnified, as if the lens has shifted to a higher power.

Thoresen lived on Eastlake/Capitol Hill, and although she was not a prominent figure in Seattle’s Northwest School, she continued to paint. Much like the internalized quality of her later paintings, she too, turned inward with greater confidence in who she was as an artist.

Just ahead is Thoresen’s last painting (Untitled, 1993). Cascadia’s marketing manager Sydney Kaemmerlen pointed out it resembles a bird and is her favorite painting from the exhibition. I agree. The large black egg-shaped orb reminds me of the glass paperweight where inside is a world within a world. The upper left corner of the canvas is a soft yellow glow and the bird-like neck curves in smoky plumes like the smoke from a candle. On the right is a pink ribbon shape, and inside the black orb is the image of an elongated piece of driftwood.

The final gallery presents a selection of Bjerke-Petersen’s paintings, marking his first showing in the U.S.. In a glass case, some of his ceramics for Rörstrand Pottery are on display with a small ceramic-lidded jar he made for his daughter Alice, which was intended to hold the ceramic jewelry he created for her. Also, some of his books and magazines are also on display, including Surrealismen (1934).

Thoresen had only a few exhibitions in small venues over her 40 years in Seattle. She worked in the lighting department at The Bon Marché, a Seattle department store, and participated in a two-person show at the store in 1975. It received no publicity or reviews.

Around that time, she and Gouveia purchased a small cabin on Orcas Island where the family spent much of their time. Her last recorded exhibition was in July 1981 at the Washington Federal Savings and Loan in Eastsound in Orcas Island.

Thoresen balanced family life with her art and went on to produce a highly accomplished body of work during her time in Seattle. In many ways, her work exceeded what she had produced in Scandinavia.

Circling back through the galleries, I pause once more at her final painting. It feels like the sum of her years as an artist – the driftwood, candle flames, the glass orb, motherhood, the influence of Surrealism and her recognition within it, and the decades she spent painting in the Pacific Northwest.

Objects of the Elements: Elsa Thoresen offers a thoughtful and in-depth introduction to a largely overlooked modernist and Northwest artist. It remains on view through March 8, 2026.