A couple of years ago I got a call from a man who wanted me to come and look at some pictures. It was his sister who had made them, he explained. She was dead now, but her art deserved a better fate than being stored in the basement living room at his and his wife's house at Stathelle. He mentioned her name, Anne Tone Thorshaug, without it telling me much, and after a quick search on the internet, I did not get much wiser.

I agreed to meet my brother, but frankly I did not have high expectations. It is, of course, every art historian's wet dream to discover a new and unknown artist, but as a rule one is disappointed. But not this time. Anne Tone Thorshaug is not a new van Gogh or Lars Hertervig, but it was something with her art and destiny that really gripped me, and that I treat others to be touched by. 

Tommy Sørbø

At the end of her life, Anne Tone finally settled with Schønfeldt. In her memoirs, she uses words such as brainwashing, loud nonsense, ingenious bluffing, totalitarian sect, economic blackmail, occultism, sadism and megalomania about him and his business. And in a series of pastels she made in the last years of her life, she portrays this environment in a way that makes me think of the documentary about the Swedish Pentecostal movement's so-called Knutby congregation. A small sect in a Swedish village where two psychopaths in the name of God brainwashed and exploited a group of people in the most cruel way.

In some of these pastels, she evokes the joy and sense of meaning by belonging to a small exclusive community with her own symbols and truths, while at the same time she portrays the horror of being manipulated by forces over which she has no control. In other pastels, there is an almost surreal nightmare atmosphere, which makes me think of the Renaissance painter Pieter Bruegel's bizarre depictions of doomsday. 

But Anne Tone also has many beautiful and harmonious depictions of children. Not to mention all her mother-and-child motive, with Leonardo da Vinci often joking in the background. For example, in how she uses his famous sfumato effect to obscure the details and thus bring out the symbiotic in the relationship between the mother and the child.

Soon, the public will finally have the opportunity to become more acquainted with this well-kept secret called Anne Tone Thorshaug. On September 11, the exhibition opened Anne Tone Thorshaug and the secret art school at TBS- Gallery in Oscarsgate in Oslo. The exhibition also presents a selection of works of art by other artists associated with Schønfeldt and his work. A company that, for better or worse, has until now been an almost unknown chapter in Norwegian art history.

Curator: Tommy Sørbø

Photo Schønfelt: Anne Tone Thorshaug Photo Thorshaug: Unknown