In the exhibition Colourful Melancholy – Knud Odde and Rouault, we bring together the great French artist Georges Rouault (1871–1958) and the Danish contemporary artist Knud Odde (b. 1955). 

Rouault and Odde share a deep fascination with outsiders or outcasts – understood as those who are forced or have chosen to stand outside bourgeois society, as depicted in figures such as the clown, the artist, the monk and the prostitute. Rouault saw Christ as an outsider and depicted him wandering around an industrialised world where church towers and chimneys exist side by side. Rouault and Odde are both free of a moralising approach, and here it is rather the leaders of society who are ironised, especially in Rouault's work, which did not paint a flattering picture of judges and rich people. The exhibition poses the perspective-giving question of what it says about a time and a culture when one considers someone to be 'the other and the foreign'. Both artists also find inspiration in literature and philosophy, including the French Symbolist poets Baudelaire, Verlaine and Rimbaud.

The exhibition will offer visitors a unique opportunity to experience the artists' superior graphic skills in Rouault's series Passion and Miserere, as well as in older and brand new works by Odde, in which he engages with Rouault's imagery.

Rouault is one of Odde's sources of inspiration, and despite the major differences between them, we hope that the exhibition will give the two artists' works a new resonance that points both backwards and forwards. The exhibition will not only highlight their individual perspectives, but also their formalistic and thematic similarities.

Knud Odde (born 1955 in St. Heddinge) is a Danish contemporary artist with a past as bassist in the band Sort Sol. He made his debut at the Artists' Autumn Exhibition, Charlottenborg, in 1983 and has, among other things, received the Danish Arts Foundation's 3-year working grant for visual arts.

Odde has exhibited at several major Danish art museums, including Trapholt and HEART.

For the past 15 years, under the name 'La Luna Convento' (The Moon's Convent), Odde has worked on portraying monks, female saints, astrologers and other figures from Asian, Christian and Sufi traditions in particular. In his works, he attempts to capture the mysticism that is a common practice in many religious traditions, where reading sacred scriptures, prayer, ritual, meditation and asceticism are often elements. Odde masters several artistic techniques such as ceramics and painting, but he particularly excels in graphic art and art on paper. 

Georges Rouault (1871–1958) was a French painter and graphic artist known for his profound social and religious themes. He is considered the most significant religious artist of the 20th century and, in his series Passion, among others, he worked with the suffering Christ, who becomes human and thus relevant and present. His works are characterised by an intense colour palette and powerful contours, which give them a painterly expression. Rouault's lifelong fascination with circus motifs, especially clowns, reflects the combined tragedy and comedy of the human condition, which he describes as ‘the circus of life.’ Rouault observed that people, like clowns, hide their true nature and inner tragedies behind masks that give an impression of joy and entertainment. "I clearly recognised that the clown was myself," he wrote. "He was all of us. Like the clown, we hide behind our own personal masks." He collaborated with the writer André Suares (1868-1948) and the publisher and art dealer Ambroise Vollard (1866-1939) on publications of illustrated books with original graphics.

 
The exhibition is supported by:
 
Grosserer L.F. Foghts Fond
Statens Kunstfond
Ny Carlsbergfondet 
Knud Højgaards Fond
Hoffmanns og Husmans Fond
 

The exhibition will be on display at Kunsthal Holmen from August 9th 2026.