Vilhelm Bjerke-Petersen

Vilhelm Bjerke-Petersen (Copenhagen, 1909 – Halmstad, Sweden, 1957) was a Danish painter, writer and art theorist. He is remembered above all as a Surrealist painter, a style he promoted in several publications during the interwar years.

He studied under Axel Revold at the Norwegian National Academy of Fine Arts from 1927 to 1929, and then under Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky at the Bauhaus in Dessau, from 1930 to 1931. His works include the books Symboler i abstract kunst (Symbols in Abstract Art, 1933) and Surrealismen (Surrealism, 1934), as well as the paintings Le Monstre dans la femme appartient a la nuit, L'actrice (1935), Kærlighedens vegetative triumf (1943) and Fille du soleil (1946).

He influenced painters such as Karen Holtsmark, Bjarne Rise and Johannes Rian. From 1944 he lived in Sweden, where he died at the age of 47 of heart disease.