Swedish-born Norwegian figurative Painter who founded the Kitsch Movement in painting. Drew great inspiration from Rembrandt and Caravaggio.
He had his formal art education at the Art Academy of Oslo and later attended the Dusseldorf Art Academy.
He wrote a manifesto "On Kitsch," which rejected the traditional art world.
He had a complex and troubled relationship with his parents. His mother left the family for a time to study at the Fashion Institute of Technology, causing him to feel abandoned and unwanted, and he found out later on that his father was not his birth parent. Rather, he had been born as a result of an affair his mother had conducted with former beau David Sandved.
He studied painting under Joseph Beuys at the Dusseldorf Art Academy.
