Rolf Aamot

Aamot is known for his work as a painter, electronic painter, art photographer, graphic artist, film director, tonal-image composer and cultural author. Much of his work consists of creating electronic tonal images and thus his work contains elements of photography but is hard to pigeon hole. It is frequently a form of performance art with abstract photographic elements. Since 1966, Aamot's works have been displayed in Scandinavia, France (Paris), Berlin (Germany), Brussels (Belgium), Venice (Italy), Moscow (Soviet Union and subsequently Russia), Kraków (Poland), the United States and Japan. His work can be found in several important public collections. Aamot has been represented at several international film and art festivals throughout the world.

• Name — Rolf Aamot • Birth Name — Rolf Aamot • Born — 28 September 1934 • Birthplace — Bergen, Norway • Died — 26 February 2024 • Field — Painting, photography • Works — Tide (1998)

Aamot was, from a very early age, taught after Bauhaus principles by his father Randulf Aamot, a master carpenter and wood carver. In 1952, he had his first solo exhibit of paintings at the Paus Knudsen Gallery in Bergen. In 1953, at the age of 18, while still attending the Norwegian National Academy of Craft and Art Industry in Oslo, he was awarded a major public commission for the Natural History Museum at the University of Oslo. From 1957 until 1960, he studied at the Norwegian National Academy of Fine Arts with the painters Aage Storstein and Alexander Schultz, both of them firmly anchored in the effort to combine figuration and abstraction typical of the 1920s. He later studied Film at the Dramatic Institute in Stockholm.

Aamot's electronic tonal-image work "Evolution" (1966) with music by Arne Nordheim was shown on Norwegian television in 1967. "Evolution" represented a milestone of a new art form in which television for the first time was used as an independent picture-artistic means of expression. Throughout the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, Aamot created a series of works for television.

* * *

• "Evolution" (1966) • "Relieff nr.2" (1967–68) • "BSK" (1968) • "Visual" (1971) • "Progress" (1977) • "Structures" (1979) • "Medusa" (1986) • "Puls" (1986) • "Close cluster" (Nærklang) (1987) • "Expulsion" (1987)

• "Relieff" (1966–67) • "Kinetic Energy" (1967–68) • "Vision" (1969) • "Structures" (1970) • "Actio" (1980) • "Aurora Borealis" (1991) • "Tide" (2000) • "Energy" (2003) • "U" (2005) • "Ir" (2006) • "Wirr" (2008) • "Contra" (2009) • "X" (2010)

Rolf Aamot is recorded as photographer, artist and composer.